Jakarta. Nadiem Anwar Makarim, once celebrated as a trailblazing tech entrepreneur who founded Gojek, now faces the steepest fall from grace in Indonesia’s political and business landscape. On Thursday, prosecutors detained the 41-year-old former education minister over alleged corruption in a multibillion-rupiah procurement project.

Once celebrated as a symbol of Indonesia’s digital transformation, Nadiem’s dramatic shift from tech pioneer to graft suspect underscores the challenges of marrying private-sector innovation with public-sector governance in one of Asia’s largest democracies.

From Startup Visionary to Cabinet Minister
Nadiem launched Gojek in 2010, at a time when Indonesia’s digital infrastructure was still underdeveloped for internet-reliant platforms. Undeterred, he pushed ahead, securing early funding from major investors such as NSI Ventures and Sequoia Capital. By 2019, Gojek had become Indonesia’s first “decacorn,” valued at $10 billion, and had expanded across Southeast Asia, creating millions of jobs.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, impressed by Nadiem’s achievements, persuaded him to join the cabinet in 2019 as education and culture minister. By 2021, his ministry’s portfolio expanded to include research and technology.

Controversial Reforms in Education
As minister, Nadiem introduced the Merdeka Curriculum (“Freedom Curriculum”), aimed at shifting Indonesia’s education system toward creativity, student interests, and flexible learning methods, including digital classrooms. It abolished the decades-old nationwide exams and rigid high-school streams.

Critics, however, argued that the reforms diluted academic discipline, widened the technology gap between urban and rural schools, and left teachers underprepared to implement the changes. The curriculum sparked a heated national debate over the future of Indonesian education.

Chromebook Procurement Scandal
Under the new administration of President Prabowo Subianto, prosecutors began investigating a massive Chromebook procurement program carried out during Nadiem’s tenure from 2020 to 2022. The Rp 9.3 trillion ($600 million) project was meant to equip schools with 1.2 million laptops.

Investigators found that many devices were unusable in remote areas because Chromebooks require stable internet access -- often lacking outside Indonesia’s big cities. The state was estimated to have lost about Rp 2 trillion ($130 million).

According to Nurcahyo Jungkung Madyo, the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) director of corruption investigations, Google had previously approached the Ministry of Education to offer Chromebooks, but the proposal was rejected by the former minister after trials in remote, internet-poor regions failed.

However, Nadiem invited Google to take part in the ministry’s laptop procurement program.

“In fact, the former minister never responded to Google’s letter because the 2019 Chromebook trial had already failed and the devices could not be used in schools located in outer and underdeveloped regions,” Nurcahyo said.

Following three rounds of questioning, Nadiem was named a suspect and taken into custody on September 4, 2025. Images of him in a pink detention vest and handcuffs quickly went viral on Indonesian social media.

Early Life and Education
Born in Singapore in 1984, Nadiem is the youngest of three children of prominent lawyer and Harvard alumnus Nono Anwar Makarim and Atika Algadri. His sisters, Rayya and Hana, are known in film and culinary business circles.

He completed high school at the United World College of Southeast Asia, earned a bachelor’s degree in international relations from Brown University, and studied at the London School of Economics before pursuing an MBA at Harvard Business School.

Nadiem worked at McKinsey & Company as a management consultant, co-founded Zalora Indonesia, and served as chief innovation officer at the digital payments company Kartuku before founding Gojek.

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