The reason why someone makes a startup is that he has strong skills in specific fields. But, there is also a founder who has the background to be a consumer for goods or services and wants to share their experiences by creating a startup.

Tomy Yunus and Yohan Limerta are the founders of the second option. When they were 23 years old, Tomy and Yohan were familiar with foreign languages: Mandarin and English. 

At first, Tomy and Yohan met in Beijing, China, and they studied the Mandarin language from zero. At that time, learning a foreign language was not booming like now.

"We see that experience was kind of valuable experience in our life. We use the Mandarin language for our daily activities in effective and efficient ways, like bargaining at the market and talking with the taxi drivers. I even got a scholarship at the most well-known in Beijing. Also, I got an opportunity to intern in a big company because I can speak another language. Finally, I realized that when we mastery one additional skill, it can change our life," Tomy said. 

Having a background in learning the Mandarin language effectively and efficiently, also having an educational background in computer science, they started to run a startup called CAKAP. Tomy believes that his experience in Beijing can give solutions for many people to elevate their capability to speak other languages. As the development of edutech is getting better, CAKAP has evolved to be a platform that offers services to develop additional skills, like marketing. 

"Before pandemic, people still skeptical to technology as its capacity of substitution for education's medium. Learning through digitalization still be assumed as an alternative solution. But now, digitalization can be considered as a replacement of conventional educational facilities," Tomy said. "We need to confess in the early pandemic. Our people are struggling to adopt online learning. There are a lot of benefits that edutech can offer," he added. 

First is accessbility. Through online learning, people from anywhere can access the exact content of education. Besides, the teacher can earn money safely. Second, online learning offers a variety of subjects' contents. Even at one time, the students can learn the course with differrent approaches, like webinars, live interaction, or just watching the video. 

Thus, students' learning experience or users of the edutech platform can be more prosperous and more diverse.

In the future, Tomy admits that CAKAP is expected to further improve the community's quality of life through education and technology. He continued, “The government is planning to achieve the vision of a golden Indonesia 2045 in which human resources are the main focus. Indonesia needs 3.8 million skilled workers every year. Nowadays, penetration in internet infrastructure is very high. Our workforce is also huge. At the same time, technology can help achieve these goals even though we still have a long way to go. This is where CAKAP wants to contribute to encouraging the development of human resources in Indonesia. One of them is by creating a new platform, namely CAKAP Upskill.”

CAKAP Upskill is designed for users to develop practical skills related to various fields of work, such as marketing, technology, to catering. This feature has now produced more than 100,000 alumni by 2021. Meanwhile, CAKAP has started to introduce Augmented Reality (AR) technology for facility and service innovation so that the classes in the CAKAP application can be more engaging for users. Especially children. Currently, CAKAP is planning to invest in AI and machine learning to provide a more personalized learning experience.

Meanwhile, talking about launching education to the public, CAKAP believes that the key is collaboration. “Most of the Indonesian people can be said to be quite tech-savvy. It is evident from the total number of social media users who are in the top order of users worldwide. I believe in the era of collaboration. The Indonesian market is very tech-savvy. Especially now that people are getting used to digital platforms for learning. Many new ideas are emerging to enhance the online learning experience.”

CAKAP has collaborated with major communication service providers in Indonesia by providing courses to their users. CAKAP has also collaborated with the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy during the pandemic to help improve the ability of people laid off. This solution has proven useful, knowing that the tourism industry is most disadvantaged during a pandemic.

So far, the various solutions that CAKAP has launched in the community have received a good response. The CAKAP application has been downloaded by almost 1 million people with a high rating. Tomy believes that by continuously listening to the market and in-depth observation of Indonesians' behavior to learn, CAKAP can continue to evolve. Mainly to create a learning ecosystem that presents interactive classes, connecting students with professional teachers from various countries in the Asia Pacific, such as the Philippines, Japan, and China.

“To support the presence of this learning ecosystem, of course, technological support is needed. We have a learning management system to manage the scheduling system between students and teachers. Because learning in CAKAP is long-term learning, this system can help students and teachers to monitor learning progress more easily. Actually, we still use the existing teaching mechanism, but we bring it to the digital world so that it can be more effective and efficient,” said Tommy.