Staff interview #27 Adinda Mahakita

I work in the Strategy & Planning team at Quipper’s Jakarta office. I joined in 2017 as a new graduate after interning with Quipper as a student. During my three-month internship, I realized there are people here I could learn so much from. So when I was offered the chance to join Quipper full-time, I was glad to accept.  

In my day-to-day work, I am monitoring, analyzing, recommending and evaluating initiatives for direct marketing acquisition and retention. My university major was actually in international relations, so I only started to learn about business analytics after I joined Quipper. My work is varied and I have encountered so many new things, from pricing to assessing sales channel performance to product analytics. I also pushed myself to learn from external resources like books and MOOCs. My interest in analytics has really deepened, and Quipper definitely accommodated my interests.

When I joined the Strategy & Planning team, I remember being challenged about every statement that I deliver in terms of the quantitative side. I was asked about the source of the data, the size and diversity of the sample size. At first, I relied on my colleagues to extract the data, but then I challenged myself to improve my data skills so I would no longer have to wait for my requests to be processed. I still feel the need to learn so many things.

We carefully analyze user behavior using tools like spreadsheets and SQL. To give an example, my team found that we have many new users signing up, but a much lower number placing an order. The number of orders resulting in payment was actually really high, which told us that we can make the greatest impact by focusing on the ordering stage. We took the initiative and ran A/B testing to increase the number of orders made.

I feel so happy and honoured to receive the MVP award in only my third year at Quipper. My biggest achievement was leading a new feature development in Quipper Indonesia, starting with the problem statement, then confirmation through user interviews, designing the feature and finally building the team, having basically started from zero.

The new feature was a prediction engine for exam results. In Indonesia, there is one mass examination to enter a state university. Based on your score, you can choose up to two universities. Even though Quipper already provides a try-out or mock exam for students, what we really wanted to do was help students accurately measure the probability of getting accepted into either university of their choice.

The prediction tool was launched in May 2020. We started designing it in December of the previous year, but due to Covid-19 the exam system had to be changed. That meant we had to redesign our product in just one month, including the prediction logic and the model of delivery. In the end, we surpassed the initial target of 3,000 users and actually reached 20,000.

The prediction engine was a new project, so there was no actual product team established. We had to work cross-functionally and borrow around 20 people from other teams like product, design and sales. It wasn’t even the priority project at the time. It was more like a pilot project to see if there would be interest among users.

I had never led a big project before, and I had to face two major challenges. First was managing everyone’s expectations and understanding how to orchestrate their unique skills in order to achieve the main goal of the project. Second was to focus on the quality of the product, which is the prediction itself.

My last manager gave me some great advice on how to manage people and bring out their best. I learned how important it is to influence people to have them feel that this is not my project but our project. When people are listened to and feel part of a project, they will go beyond their limits.

My advice to anyone just joining Quipper would be to have a growth mindset. Yes, you can learn so many things from other people, but you will lose that chance if you don’t have a growth mindset by yourself. The company provides you with so many opportunities to grow and learn, but you need to have the right mindset to seek out those opportunities, not just wait until they are being offered.

I hope Quipper can also grow and help to transform online learning in Indonesia. People in our country are familiar with online learning, but in reality the usage is still low. Because of the pandemic, more people are actually forced to study online, so I think studying online will soon be as normal as watching Netflix or listening to Spotify. When we reach that point, we can start to focus more on personalizing Quipper for each student’s needs.

2020/7/20

* The business (including business name and business description), people and titles introduced in the article are those at the time of the interview. It may be different at this time.