PATRICK WALUJO
Co-founder of Indonesian private equity firm Northstar Group, one of Gojek's first investors, and the man who ran GoTo from 2023 to 2025 and got it to its first profit.
Patrick Walujo was one of Gojek's very first investors, back in 2014 when the company was a motorbike-taxi hotline. That bet helped build a decacorn. He co-founded Northstar Group, the private equity firm that put Indonesian buyouts on the map, then took the CEO chair at GoTo in 2023 to force the sprawling tech giant toward profit. He got it there. In January 2025 he promised to stay until 2029. By November 2025 major shareholders had pushed him out to clear the way for a Grab deal. A rare investor who actually went in and ran the thing he bet on, and found out owners can fire owners.
Net Worth
Not publicly disclosed
Verified Sep 2026
Nationality
Indonesian
Time Horizon
Long-Term
Risk Appetite
7 / 10
CAREER & BACKGROUND
Patrick Sugito Walujo trained as an engineer at Cornell, then went straight into high finance. He started at Goldman Sachs in London and New York, then ran deals in Tokyo as a senior VP at Pacific Century Ventures.
In 2003 he came home and co-founded Northstar Group with Glenn Sugita. Northstar became the biggest name in Indonesian private equity, managing more than $2.5 billion and partnering closely with US giant TPG.
Then Patrick made the bet of his life. He became one of the very first investors in Gojek, in 2014, a scrappy motorbike-taxi app founded by Nadiem Makarim.
When he asked Nadiem how much money the company needed, Nadiem said about $2 million to reach profit. Gojek grew into one of Southeast Asia's biggest tech companies.
In June 2023 Patrick stepped out from behind the deal table and became CEO of GoTo, the giant formed by the Gojek and Tokopedia merger. In January 2025 he said he would stay until 2029.
In November 2025 GoTo's big shareholders moved to replace him with Hans Patuwo, and the Grab merger talks that followed have still not produced a deal.
COMPANIES & ROLES
Patrick's home base is Northstar Group, the private equity firm he co-founded in 2003. It buys and grows companies across Indonesia and the wider region, and has raised five private equity funds plus a venture fund.
US firm TPG took a stake in Northstar, tying the two together. His most famous single investment is Gojek, where he was one of the first investors in 2014 and stayed close through its merger with Tokopedia into GoTo.
He served GoTo as a commissioner, then as CEO from 2023 to 2025. Through Northstar he has backed a long list of Southeast Asian growth companies over two decades.
INVESTING STYLE & PHILOSOPHY
Patrick invests on fundamentals, not hype. His pitch is that Indonesia's young population and growing economy make it one of the best places on earth to build companies, as long as you back the right ones and help them actually grow.
He is a patient, hands-on private equity guy at heart. He does not just write a check and wait.
He takes board seats, pushes on strategy, and, in GoTo's case, literally ran the company. His view is that Southeast Asia offers strong medium to long-term opportunities for anyone willing to do the work.
THE PLAYBOOK
Risk Approach
Patrick takes big swings but likes to control the outcome. Being Gojek's first investor was a wild early-stage bet, the kind most private equity firms avoid.
But his style is to get deeply involved and steer, which beats handing money over and hoping. At GoTo he inherited a company burning cash and dragged it toward profit, which meant cutting costs and killing sacred cows.
That is risk management through hard work rather than caution. He would rather roll up his sleeves than diversify his worries away.
Money Habits
Patrick keeps a low profile that borders on invisible for someone so powerful. He rarely does press and shares almost nothing about his personal spending, which is its own kind of statement in a country where tycoons love the spotlight.
His work life runs between Jakarta and Singapore, where Northstar is based. What is clear is that he treats his own time as the scarce resource.
He left the comfortable role of investor to take on the grind of running GoTo day to day, a job most people with his money would never touch.
BIGGEST WIN
The Gojek bet is the one for the history books. Patrick was one of the company's first investors, in 2014, backing Nadiem Makarim when the whole plan needed roughly $2 million to reach profit.
Gojek grew from a motorbike-taxi hotline into a super-app used by tens of millions, then merged with Tokopedia to form GoTo, which listed in Jakarta in 2022 worth tens of billions of dollars. Being first on the cap table of a deal like that is the dream every venture investor chases and almost never catches.
Patrick caught it.
BIGGEST MISTAKE
The ending at GoTo. The company went public in Jakarta in 2022 with huge fanfare, then watched its shares lose most of their value as investors soured on cash-burning tech.
Walujo took the CEO job in 2023 to fix that, and he did deliver GoTo's first full-year underlying profit for 2024. In January 2025 he publicly committed to staying CEO until 2029.
Ten months later he was out. Big shareholders including SoftBank, Provident and Peak XV pushed to replace him, reportedly because they saw him as resisting a takeover by archrival Grab.
Hans Patuwo took over. The turnaround worked on the income statement.
His own backers still showed him the door.
FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY
Patrick's core belief is that real value comes from building sustainable businesses, not chasing valuations. When he took over GoTo, he made profitability the whole point, saying he would push the company toward profit and strengthen the base for long-term growth.
He delivered GoTo's first full-year underlying profit. His investing rule is patience plus involvement.
Pick markets with strong fundamentals, back them for the long haul, and stay in the room to make sure the plan actually happens.
FAMILY & PERSONAL LIFE
Patrick married into Indonesian business royalty. His wife is Ayu Patricia Rachmat, daughter of Theodore Permadi Rachmat, one of the richest people in the country and the founder of the Triputra Group.
So Patrick sits inside two power structures at once, his own self-made private equity empire and one of Indonesia's great industrial families. Despite all that, he is famously guarded about his private life and almost never talks about it in public.
EDUCATION
Patrick studied operations research and industrial engineering at Cornell University in the United States. It is an engineering degree, not a finance one, which fits a guy who treats businesses as systems to be optimized.
From Cornell he went straight to Goldman Sachs, and the finance education continued on the job.
BOOKS & RESOURCES
Patrick has not written a book, and given how private he is, do not expect a memoir
Two books capture his world, though
Profiles CEOs who quietly built huge value by thinking like investors, which is basically Patrick's whole approach at GoTo
The classic, wild story of how private equity really works, the industry Patrick spent two decades mastering. Read both and you understand the two halves of his career
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QUOTES (5)
As we look ahead to the new year and drive towards profitable growth, I am confident that we can cement our position as our country's leading tech company for many years to come.
We expect even faster growth for the rest of the year, while also remaining committed to our profitability goals.
As one of the early investors in Gojek and a commissioner of GOTO, I have always had great confidence in the company. If my nomination is approved by the shareholders, I will dedicate myself fully to GOTO and work together with other members of the board to drive progress across business units, continuously optimize the company's strategy towards profitability targets, and strengthen the foundation for long-term growth.
The past 2 years have seen unprecedented volatility, uncertainty and complexity, but South-east Asia and, in particular, Indonesia continue to present compelling medium to long-term investment opportunities.
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