 Welcome to ITU Telecom World 2019 here in Budapest, Hungary, and I'm very pleased to be joined in the studio this afternoon by Alan Abdullah, who is the CEO of Bahasu in Indonesia. Welcome to the studio. Thank you. Now let's talk a little bit about, so you've just come out straight out of a panel session. Have you here at Telecom World? Yes, I just did actually. Tell us a little bit about Telecom World. I was really nervous actually. It's actually my first panel and it was international and I was sitting with people with much more experience. And I am especially in the topic because my background is actually in education technology and the topic today was AI. But yeah, it was a great session. I think a lot of the audience was involved. So it was looking at AI and gender mainstream, gender bias, I should say. Yeah, so when I first got the topic, I didn't even know that there was gender inequality in artificial intelligence technology. And I needed to make sure and I asked actually the people that was watching us, I put it up on the floor and I'm like, who before this panel knew about this? And there was like only two hands out of 30 people. Right, amazing. And what were some of the key takeaways from that session? I mean, my personal one was that it has to start from awareness. I mean, when people in the ITU who's joining the forum wasn't even aware about it, I think awareness should be the foundation first. And then obviously regulation and everything else comes to play. So it's basically the session was saying or talking about the fact that there is gender bias in AI that essentially that it's choosing men over women. Where is the bias? It was more to the AI technology focusing our targeting more to men and more favorable than women. I see. Okay. All right. Well, absolutely. I don't think it's just just in AI, of course. So, you know, a lot of other things to tell us a little bit about Bahasa and what does Bahasa do? So Bahasa is actually an education technology. So we start with language. We partner up with the University of Indonesia, which is the leading in the university. We create a platform where it's interactive. It's fun. And then basically and the people or our users will get a certificate from the University of Indonesia when they complete the course, which of course they can use to apply for jobs and everything else. Okay. And how's it been going? How far have you spread this net? So currently we have around 500,000 users. So half a million. The pie is much bigger. But I'm proud to say that we are also helping the areas in the rural areas together with Bhakti come to our pavilion and know more about Bhakti. Basically, when I first had a meeting with them, they explained to me that they put in over a thousand schools free internet. And then I asked them, I'm like, what do you do afterwards? They're like, oh, no, we just put internet. And I'm like, you know, that code is just going to be ended up on doing people doing social media and such, right? So from that, we became we became the content partner. So we actually develop a platform where it has what do you call it offline mode like Spotify. So these students in the rural areas, like I'm talking about really rural, like people go into school and like little, you know, wooden boats and stuff like so they can go there and then they can download it from the government's free internet. And then they can like learn when they're home. So we're right now currently in over 500 schools in the rural areas. Which innovation do you think is going to be key to connecting the unconnected? That's that's that's a tough question. I think every, every startup have different key factors. Education for one is obviously our platform. Bahasa is self-learning and people in India is not yet used to self-learning. Like, you know, when we're talking about first world countries or more modern countries, the people they have online classes since like college. We don't have that in India. So to kind of push them towards self-learning to actually take their time from what's playing games or whatever and actually go to an education technology platform and spend their time there. Instead of playing games and everything was it's yeah, it's we're still trying to do that. What about language barriers? What about the content that is that is online? How much does it help to have local content in local language? Yeah, that's the thing, right? I'm lucky enough that I grew up in an international school. So that kind of pushed me also to helping the whole Indonesia know English because I think it's unfair that I have access to so much more information than the others just because of language. You know, I understand that it's difficult because in Indonesia, you don't have to know English. It's different where when, for example, in India, they talk with each other in their language. But when it comes to the Supreme Court and everything else, it's an English. So by default, they have to learn English that doesn't that that's not there in Indonesia. So but I think it's important. It's globalization. It's, you know, everyone should have the same opportunity for information and everything else. And for startups, how important is government support or investment in keeping that continuity and keeping the energy going? Of course. I mean, government support is huge in startups like the regulation and everything else is it's it's it's something new. So government support in terms of like telling us startups was going on and then bringing us to forums like this and everything. I think it's it's it's very key. And in terms of investment, yes, it's it's it's a it's a battle of the fittest. 95% of startups in my stage. That's that's the failure rate 95%. So right now they're calling my startup in the valley of death. And this is worldwide, not just Indonesia. So when it comes to investment, it's really important because that's that's what drives you like to to innovate. You know, it's in startups, you know, it's innovate or die basically. And what about following G is 5G going to open up lots of opportunities for you, do you think? I think it would help more internet access obviously would help because the bottom of the pyramid is actually the biggest population in Indonesia. So I think access for internet all over Indonesia would be helpful to both the users and us startups in terms of 5G. For me, I don't think and for Bahasa, I'm speaking for Bahasa as well. I don't think it would make that big of a difference because right now not even all of our areas get 3G's. You know what I mean? So some of them are still on, you know, 2G 3G's. So even 4G they don't they don't have access yet. So for the government to focus on making it 5G, I think only a certain amount of people will enjoy it. And of course it's important for enterprises and businesses, but for the mass, I don't think it should be the main focus. What's been your impression here of ITU Telecom World? It's fun. I mean, I thought coming to a, you know, like a conference or exhibition would be very tense and everything. And then going around you see people sitting in beanbags and people just actually having fun networking and everything. I think ITU is a very great platform. It's not just for business to business. It's not just for government to government. But actually people and startups like me get so much opportunity from this ITU. Great. Well, thank you very much for joining us in the studio. We're not sitting on beanbags here, but maybe next time. I'll make some recommendations. Okay. Well, thank you very much for joining us. We wish you all the very best for the future and hopefully we'll catch up with you again at another ITU Telecom event. Thank you. Thanks a lot.