Ruangguru Foundation

As part of the SOLVE Community since 2017, I have always been inspired by the winners of The Elevate Prize and their impacts to the society. I believe that by applying to The Elevate Prize, the support that I will get will be a significant driving force for the people working at Ruangguru Foundation, knowing what they do matters.

I would like to use the Elevate Prize funding to support our lifelong-learning efforts to help the underprivileged youths in Indonesia. Currently, we are working with international organizations to provide free academic and work readiness programs for the underprivileged and unemployed youths through our platforms. The prize funding will be used to scale our programs and broaden the opportunity to more disadvantaged youths across Indonesia.

Born and raised in a small city in West Sumatera, Indonesia, I was the youngest child to a family of six and the first person in my family to graduate from college. Though statistics deemed that I would be yet another child with no access to higher education, my parents instilled in me a hunger to go beyond the boundaries. I became not only the first child to graduate from college, but also had the opportunity to be educated in Columbia University & Harvard University. I have learned first-hand how quality education could transform someone's life.

My experience inspired me and my Co-Founder to build Ruangguru, now the largest ed-tech company in Southeast Asia. The idea behind Ruangguru is to deliver the best quality and interactive content for students through a mobile app. Currently, Ruangguru is operating in 3 countries and has 22 million users and 300,000 partnering teachers. I also manage social projects through Ruangguru Foundation in collaboration with national and global partners to target underprivileged students and youth. My goal for the foundation is to continue expanding through partnership with different sectors, to enable more access to quality education that will transform the lives of the disadvantaged.

Ruangguru is the largest tech-enabled provider in Southeast Asia - serving 22 million students, 300,000 partnering teachers, with >4,000 employees across Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand. Ruangguru’s strongest components are the high-quality content and the AI-powered personalized learning. All of Ruangguru’s products can be used on the mobile app and desktop devices, making them accessible with minimum internet connection.

In addition to its business activity, Ruangguru also established Ruangguru Foundation in 2017 with the mission to improve the quality of teachers, employability, and access to learning by partnering with global and national organizations and companies, impacting more than 500,000 beneficiaries since its first establishment. Some of the projects that we are doing right now are to give access to learn employability skills for underprivileged and unemployed youths in Indonesia, give scholarships to underprivileged students, and provide online teacher training especially in underserved and remote areas in Indonesia.

Ruangguru’s efforts have been recognized globally by SOLVE at MIT, DFAT, Atlassian Foundation International, among others. Recently, Ruangguru was ranked The Top #25 in Fast Company’s World Most Innovative Companies in the world.

While Indonesia has made impressive progress in poverty reduction (cutting the overall poverty rate from 23.4% in 1999 to 9.2% in 2019), tens of millions of people still live below the official poverty line. Better education is a proven pathway out of poverty. Studies found that senior high school and higher education offer a pathway to protecting against poverty, showing that Indonesians with senior high school diplomas enjoy on average 30% higher income compared to those without.

Many youths in Indonesia do not even reach senior high school. In 2020, 39% of 16-18-year-olds are no longer at school. At 13.4%, Indonesia’s youth (15-24) unemployment rate in 2019 was higher than comparable ASEAN countries.

Ruangguru offers high-quality online education resources that have a unique opportunity to address issues affecting educational equity, by offering more affordable access and supplementary opportunity. Online resources also offer a pathway back into education for those who may have fallen out of the system, specifically tailored to the needs of disadvantaged youth. Finally, it also helps respond to the profound need for skill development for the disadvantaged and unemployed youth that can help them find a job or a better career.

The online learning program for disadvantaged youth results to date from pre and post-surveys are outstanding, with 100% of participants having attained senior high school equivalency diploma, 58.4% of program participants securing jobs within 3 months of graduation, and 7.39% going on to enter higher education. In addition, this program also supports a broader group of disadvantaged youth who are unemployed and have difficulties securing jobs or still pursuing their education in university.

Building on this success, we aim to further evolve the approach, targeting more students at more diverse institutions, while also working to strategically engage different levels of Indonesia’s education and employment system, as well as the private sector, to secure buy-in and progress a credible scaling and sustainability pathway. Efforts to scale and sustain this program will occur through three interrelated strategies: 1) continuing efforts to test, re-evaluate and fine-tune what works, 2) developing and strengthening key partnerships, and 3) developing and testing alternative funding models that can sustain the program in the long term, including collaborating with government and private sectors to co-fund and deliver the program.