From two cars to 20,000: how Bluebird became Indonesia’s ride-hailing giant
From battling Jakarta’s gridlock to facing down ride-hailing rivals, Bluebird’s Noni Purnomo has steered her family firm through crises and change while championing integrity, sustainability and opportunity for women in Indonesia’s transport industry.
Businesswoman and philanthropist Noni Purnomo is the president commissioner of Jakarta-based transportation firm Bluebird Group. The family business has survived plenty of bumps in the road since her grandmother started it in the 1970s. Since taking charge, Purnomo has spearheaded initiatives such as Make Jakarta’s Sky Blue, One Ride One Seed, Blue Bird Peduli and the introduction of e-taxis. She has also seen off a series of challenges including the coronavirus pandemic, the advent of ride-hailing and Jakarta’s infamous traffic.
Monocle caught up with Purnomo in Hong Kong to discuss opportunities in the logistics business, doing right by both staff and customers, and how to keep a sense of perspective. Bluebird has approximately 40,000 staff and more than 20,000 vehicles, from cars and trucks to buses and limousines.
Bluebird has 40,000 staff and more than 20,000 vehicles, from cars and trucks to buses and limousines. Tell us about the business.
My grandmother founded it in 1972. She was a law professor with no knowledge of business but needed to pay for her three children’s education. When my grandfather passed away, we were left with nothing. Starting with two cars, she grew the company around a philosophy of giving happiness to others, hence the [positive image of the] Bluebird. Her main purpose was not just to fulfil her own financial needs but to grow a company that would be able to give back to the country by providing safe and reliable transportation services. She also cared about elevating the people who were working with us and their families. That’s still the purpose of the company.
You did an IPO in 2014. What is the valuation of your company today?
It went down a lot since the IPO because we got hit twice: in 2016 by ride-hailing, then in 2020 by the pandemic. I haven’t looked at the numbers. I try not to.
What are the challenges of operating taxis in Jakarta? You’re trying to get cars around one of the world’s most traffic-clogged cities but you’re known for reliability and having nice, kind drivers. How do you do it?
Praying. That’s the first thing. The biggest challenges for us – especially because we own and operate our own vehicles – are efficiency and productivity. So congestion is a major issue. We’re grateful for the latest technology that guides us through the traffic as efficiently as possible but it’s still a challenge. We’re trying to shift towards renewable energy; we hope that it will become cheaper. Gasoline takes up about 20 per cent of our revenue. We do our own maintenance and have depots so every night, every vehicle comes back to be cleaned and maintained. That’s about 3 per cent of our revenue. It’s a reason to look for different types of vehicles that need less maintenance, hence our electric taxis.
Having more sustainable vehicles is an important part of your plan. What are the main difficulties when it comes to shifting the fleet to electric vehicles?
When the former president announced the aspiration for Indonesia to become net zero by 2060, we took that opportunity to join in. In 2019 we launched our electric taxis but we still only have about 400 and there are a lot of challenges in implementing this change in Indonesia. It took us two years just to get the proper licences and to navigate the legislation and rules. But perhaps that’s the beauty of it: as long as there is chaos, there are also opportunities. If everything settled down, we would be flat. We always like to see opportunities in such challenges and Indonesia is still growing very rapidly.
Tell us a little about how you run your company. What are some of the hurdles that you have cleared?
I’m the third generation of my family in this business and you know what they say: the first generation founds the company, the second generation builds it and the third … Well, hopefully I have proven this wrong but the third tends to ruin the company. When I took over from my father, we were hit by ride-hailing, then we got clobbered by the pandemic. So how did I wake up every morning and still want to go to the office? I’m very privileged because I inherited a very strong company from my father, who had built it up with my grandmother. It had good values and we still focus on integrity every single day. We are the company that has returned the most lost belongings, not just in Indonesia but probably in the world too: we have returned about 70 per cent of items left in our taxis. A lot of our customers are tourists and have left the country so we can’t return everything.
Integrity remains very important, as well as our care for others. It’s one of the things that my grandmother always reminded me of when she was alive: the idea that we have to treat every person in the company as if they’re our own family. This helped us to get over certain challenges. For example, when ride-hailing arrived, it was the worst time for us. I remember in March 2016 there was a huge demonstration in Jakarta and everyone accused Bluebird of being behind the protest. It was devastating for us because, before then, Bluebird was associated with happiness. Suddenly people got angry with us on social media. Our drivers were giving their hearts and their time to serve the passengers but it was all doom and gloom.
As a leader, I needed to go to them and lift their energy levels back up. So we announced that the next day, we would offer free taxi rides for everyone for 24 hours [and pay our drivers]. Some people thought that it was just a PR gimmick but what we wanted was to lift the morale of our drivers as they were so down. The next morning, they came back to work heartened and that is the main reason that we survived at all.
Unlike in the gig economy, your pitch to employees is that working for you is a point of pride. What does it mean to wear the Bluebird uniform?
It’s made of batik, a traditional Indonesian fabric, because we’re 100 per cent Indonesian and it is given to our drivers when they become permanent. They have to be a temporary driver or trainee for about six months in order to become permanent. During this time they’re being trained but also monitored. The uniform is a symbol. You’re representing not just shareholders or the Bluebird family but also Indonesia itself.
Your grandmother inspired you to help women who want to get into business and you do a lot through scholarships for your drivers and their families. Tell us a little about being a female leader and what you’re trying to do for young women.
Most of the time I’m in a minority. Not just in the industry but in my family too: in my generation there are seven of us but just two are women. I’m not even the eldest. But we were all given equal opportunities and that comes with equal responsibilities. In 1998 we launched scholarships for the children of our drivers and during that time about 2 per cent of recipients were female. We give about 1,000 every year and today 52 per cent go to women. Hopefully, this means that our drivers and employees also understand the importance of equal opportunity. We also encourage our drivers’ wives and adult daughters to start businesses and give vocational training for this. All I ask of them is to give equal opportunity to both boys and girls and to ensure that girls can go to school too. That’s the programme’s purpose.
