Vikram Sinha, President Director and Chief Executive Officer, Indosat
Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison is a leading name in Indonesia’s telecom sector. Along with its subsidiaries and affiliates, Indosat provides an extensive range of offerings including cellular services, ICT solutions, data centres, fibre-to-the-home, electronic payment services, financial services and other digital services. In an interview with tele.net, discussed the company’s key business developments, recent collaborations and future road map…
What were the key business highlights of Indosat in 2024? What are its current focus areas?
In 2024, we faced some headwinds, but still achieved very strong financial and operational performance across all our business lines. Our total revenue grew by 9.1 per cent to $3.4 billion. Meanwhile, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) was up 10.2 per cent to $1.6 billion and our normalised net profit increased by 38.1 per cent to $303 million. Our APRU also rose by 6.6 per cent, reflecting the improvements in customer experience.
AI has become our North Star in our journey to becoming a truly AI-native company. In August 2024, we started moving towards this vision with the launch of GPU Merdeka, meaning “independent”, a new sovereign AI-cloud service that provides GPU-as-a-service (GPUaaS) for AI infrastructure that is domestically located, managed by local companies and operated by Indonesians.
Since then, we have introduced a new AI cloud platform focusing on AI solutions for Indonesia’s financial services sector. In November 2024, on the Indonesia AI day, we launched Sahabat-AI, a unique large language model (LLM) specifically designed for Bahasa Indonesia.
How is the company navigating the rapidly evolving tech environment?
One of our most groundbreaking initiatives is our partnership with NVIDIA, announced in February 2024, to build sovereign AI cloud capabilities. This positions Indonesia as a key player in the global AI ecosystem while reinforcing digital independence. In parallel, our collaboration with local-minded companies such as the GoTo Group, aims to build a localised LLM by developing a Bahasa Indonesia and local dialect language model, ensuring AI solutions are accessible and relevant to all Indonesians. Sahabat-AI is designed to enhance language understanding and bridge gaps left by global AI models.
What synergies and challenges do you expect from Indosat’s recent partnership with AIonOS?
Our partnership with AIonOS is another great example of the role international collaborations play in driving our growth strategy and bringing cutting-edge technology to Indonesia. Indosat’s broader purpose is to connect and empower every Indonesian. This requires collaboration with technology companies from India and across the world. This is the first large-scale AI partnership between Indonesia and India, and is expected to set a new benchmark for our future joint achievements.
What is the company’s future road map?
My priority for 2025 is to continue to drive EBITDA and ARPU growth and further increase the stickiness of our customers. AI-powered hyper-personalisation will drive accelerated ARPU growth in 2025, with green shoots already emerging. The ARPU is expected to scale up throughout the year.
Our focus on the “digital first” approach will help drive strong growth in the monthly active users of our apps, which have already surpassed 45 million and continue to increase. This will create more opportunities for monetisation and long-term user engagement.
We will also see growth in revenue and EBITDA driven by new initiatives, specifically GPU Merdeka, our GPUaaS, and enterprise and home broadband businesses.
Finally, smart capex investment and smart distribution through AI-powered models will improve cost efficiencies while smart network deployment will enhance the user experience.
What is your outlook for the telecom sector?
The outlook for the telecom sector is bright as we embrace new technologies such as AI and 5G. The macro environment in Indonesia also supports industry growth. With the new government now in place, it is able to support growth and social programmes expected to drive domestic consumption in 2025. The state-owned enterprise restructuring planned by the government should also be a net positive, while further consolidation in the market is likely to enhance competition and pricing. These factors should lead to an overall industry growth rate in 2025 that exceeds the 2-3 per cent recorded in 2024.
What are the key trends that are expected to shape the company’s future?
We are focusing on developing Indonesia’s digital and AI-ready talent. Through initiatives like our planned AI Centre of Excellence, and digital development programmes such as IDCamp and SheHacks, we are leading the way in building Indonesia’s digital talent pool.
