KINETIK Sweef Interns Case Study Series - Wildan

My background is in Industrial Engineering, having completed a bachelor’s degree in the subject at Universitas Indonesia. For as long as I can remember, I wanted to become a strategy consultant, so throughout university I actively pursued internships in consulting firms and student consulting organisations. Those experiences gave me strong exposure to problem-solving, structured thinking, and working with different types of businesses. 

However, during my Strategy & Operations internship at a consulting firm, I realised the limitations of traditional consulting: after doing all the hard work, analysis, presentations, and recommendations, you often have very little influence over what actually gets implemented. That experience pushed me to rethink my path and look for a career where I could be more involved in execution. 

That’s how I became interested in private equity and impact investing. I was drawn to the idea that, as an investor with equity in a company, you have more leverage to drive real change and support long-term value creation. It feels more like being in the driver’s seat, actively shaping the direction of the business, rather than being in the passenger seat, like in consulting. This blend of analytical work, hands-on involvement, and meaningful impact is what now guides my career interests. 

 

What made you join the KINETIK Sweef internship, and how did your background and interests connect to its mission? 

I decided to join the KINETIK Sweef internship because it was a rare opportunity to work with an impact investing platform that directly supports startups in Indonesia. The idea of combining investment discipline with meaningful social and environmental impact strongly resonated with my long-term aspiration to build a career that “does well by doing good.” 

As I learned more about the Program, I was especially drawn to its focus on providing technical assistance to founders. This aligned very closely with my background in consulting, where I was already used to diagnosing business problems and helping teams improve their operations and strategy. The Program felt like a natural bridge between my consulting experience and my goal of eventually moving to the buy-side of the investment sector, allowing me to contribute through hands-on support for startups while building exposure to how investors think, evaluate companies, and design value-creation initiatives. 

 

Can you describe a project or initiative you’ve worked on that supported gender equality or climate action within the Program? 

One project I’m particularly proud of was supporting a workshop series led by Brianna and Neil Yeoh from OnePointFive, aimed at startups in the Indonesian ecosystem. The sessions covered topics such as Gender ROITM, Impact Measurement and Management, and Life-Cycle Analysis, helping founders understand how gender equality and climate action can be embedded into their core business model, not treated as a side initiative. 

My role included coordinating with the speakers, helping shape the session flow and materials, and supporting on-the-day facilitation and follow-up with participants. Through this, I saw firsthand how powerful it is when founders are given practical tools and frameworks, not just theory. Many participants started to see new ways to integrate gender lenses into hiring, product design, or supply chains, and to think more systematically about their environmental footprint across the product life cycle. 

It was both eye-opening and fulfilling to watch how engaged the participants were, asking sharp questions, sharing their own challenges, and reframing their growth story to better highlight gender and climate impact. This not only moved them a step closer to advancing gender equality and sustainability in their businesses, but also strengthened their narratives for investors, partners, and customers. 

 

How do your contributions help advance the Program’s goals around gender and climate? 

One of the key ways I’ve contributed to the Program’s gender and climate goals was through my role as a Project Management Officer (PMO) for one of our KINETIK Sweef Fellows, Ternakin. Here, I helped strengthen their impact measurement and management (IMM) practices. Working closely with our in-house impact expert, Brianna, I learned how to translate high-level concepts like theory of change into practical tools that founders can apply in their business. I began to really understand how inputs, activities, outputs, and outcomes link together to create measurable impact. 

My role was to help Ternakin identify which metrics in their value chain truly mattered for impact, such as which stakeholders benefit, what kind of environmental improvements or livelihood changes are created, and how these could be tracked consistently over time. By mapping and prioritising these indicators, we made it easier for them to monitor their progress in a more objective way, rather than relying only on anecdotes. 

This work directly supports the Program’s broader gender and climate agenda. Stronger IMM allows KINETIK Sweef Fellows to better demonstrate how they are serving underrepresented groups, improving livelihoods, and contributing to environmental outcomes. It also gives the Program clearer data to understand where our support is making the most difference and how we can further refine the Program to drive gender-inclusive and climate-positive impact across the portfolio. 

 

What hands-on experiences or mentorship at the Program have been most influential for your professional growth (or your favourite experience! You can describe the work culture, interactions with mentors, supervisors, colleagues, other interns here etc)? 

One of the most influential parts of my experience at the Program has been the mentorship culture. The seniors are very generous with their time and are always willing to set aside space for one-on-one sessions with me. 

In those conversations, we don’t just talk about work. We discuss my broader career aspirations, how the impact investing ecosystem works, and even perspectives on life outside of work. I’ve been able to ask my colleagues almost anything, about skills, career moves, salary, further studies, or personal doubts, and they always respond openly and thoughtfully. 

This has been especially meaningful because I’m in a transition phase: finishing my bachelor’s, entering the workforce, and dealing with a bit of a quarter-life crisis. Having mentors and colleagues who are willing to listen and share their real experiences has been very reassuring. It made me feel less lost, gave me clearer direction on what I want to build long term, and made the workplace feel like a supportive environment to grow both professionally and personally. 

 

Could you share an example when you tackled a challenge, and how guidance from your mentors or peers shaped your response? 

One of the most challenging projects I worked on was building a financial projection model for Ternakin from scratch. At the time, I had some basic financial knowledge, but I had never developed a full model end-to-end that would be used by both the KINETIK Sweef team and an external founder team. 

From the beginning, our AVP, Stefani played a crucial mentorship role to me. She first guided me on how to structure the model, what key revenue and cost drivers to include, how to reflect operational realities in the numbers, and how to make the model flexible enough to handle different scenarios. Once the structure was in place, she also coached me on how to present the output in a way that a broader audience could understand, not just people with a finance background. 

Alongside that, I had to coordinate closely with the Ternakin team to gather assumptions, clarify operational details, and validate whether the model reflected their business accurately. The team was very responsive, proactive, and open in our discussions, which helped me refine the model iteratively based on their feedback. 

This project was a major learning experience for me. It challenged my technical skills, my communication with founders, and my ability to manage a complex task over time. The guidance from Stefani on the financial technicalities as well as stakeholder management shaped not only the final outcome of the model, but also how I now approach complex, ambiguous projects with more structure and confidence. 

 

In what ways has the internship changed your perspective or readiness to pursue opportunities in entrepreneurship or impact investing? 

The internship was genuinely eye-opening for me, especially because opportunities to experience impact investing up close are still quite rare in Indonesia. Before I interned with the Program, impact investing felt like a distant concept I mostly read about. Through the Program, I was able to see how it actually works in practice — how capital, impact, and risk are balanced in real decisions. 

The one-on-one sessions with the team played a big role in shifting my perspective. I learned how investors think about sectors, business models, and impact frameworks, and how they assess whether a company is truly investment-ready. This helped me connect the dots between theory and actual investment processes. 

On the day-to-day side, working with founders through technical assistance also increased my readiness to pursue both entrepreneurial and impact investing opportunities. I saw firsthand what common challenges businesses face, whether in operations, strategy, or financial management, and how targeted support can move the needle. That experience made me feel more prepared not only to evaluate companies from an investor’s lens, but also to someday build or support a business that is both commercially viable and impactful. 

 

How do you plan to use skills and knowledge gained at the Program in your next career steps or future entrepreneurial pursuits? 

Through my time at the Program, I’ve gained a set of skills and perspectives that I plan to carry forward into both my investment career and any future entrepreneurial path. 

Through the Technical Assistance (TA) arm, I first learned how to assess a business by really understanding its business model, then evaluating its growth plans from both a financial and operational perspective. This gave me a more holistic view of what it takes to run and scale a company, which I see as a key foundation if I decide to build my own enterprise in the future. 

I also started to see investment work as three main streams: sourcing, value creation, and exit. At the Program, I’ve had some exposure to sourcing, but a lot of hands-on experience in value creation by providing technical assistance to KINETIK Sweef Fellows and supporting them in growing their businesses. On top of that, I sometimes worked in parallel with the investment team when our mandates overlapped, and I was invited to sit in on several Investment Committee (IC) meetings. Watching how deals are discussed, challenged, and approved, and what kinds of questions come up in an IC setting, was an invaluable learning experience that I’ll bring into my next roles in investment and beyond. 

 

Fun question! If the KINETIK Sweef internship was a nasi padang order, what would it be and why? 

If the KINETIK Sweef internship was a nasi padang order, I’d say it would be gulai tunjang. 

At first glance, gulai tunjang can look a bit daunting, big cuts of tendon, rich yellow curry, and a texture that feels unfamiliar if you’ve never tried it before. That’s exactly how I felt entering the investment world with zero prior experience. Coming from a consulting-heavy background, stepping into the Program’s mix of investing and program work felt intimidating and outside my comfort zone. 

In the beginning, I also struggled with how messy and unstructured things could feel at times, juggling value-creation projects, sourcing start-ups, and helping design workshops and support for founders. It wasn’t a neat, linear system; it was more like a full Padang table where everything arrives at once. 

But just like gulai tunjang, once you get used to the texture, the pace, the ambiguity, the agile way the team works, you start to discover its warmth. Over time, I learned to really enjoy the richness of the experience: direct exposure to founders, hands-on involvement in technical assistance, and the beauty of learning in an environment where things move fast and everyone is building as they go. 

In the end, what started out intimidating became something deeply comforting, fulfilling, and memorable, just like finally learning to love gulai tunjang. 

 

We asked Wildan the next few questions to shed light on the process of transitioning from intern to full-time employee at the KINEIK Sweef Entrepreneurs Program. 

What motivated you to move from intern to full-time employee at the Program? 

First, the learning opportunities at the Program are immense. I get daily exposure to MBA graduates and can easily ask for one-on-one sessions whenever I need guidance, which accelerates my development. 

Second, the work itself feels meaningful. Providing support to startups in Indonesia and seeing the real impact of our Programs is very fulfilling, both professionally and personally. 

Third, the team environment is very positive. I genuinely enjoy working with the people here, and that makes the day-to-day experience fun and energising. 

Lastly, staying with the Program aligns strongly with my long-term career aspiration to work on the investment side, particularly in impact investing. This role is a natural stepping stone toward that goal. 

 

How did your internship experiences help you make this transition, and what was most transformative? 

My internship with the Program gave me a solid foundation for how a team actually delivers value, especially through providing technical assistance, creating workshops, and managing the Learning Management System. I learned the end-to-end process of designing support for Fellows, from scoping their needs to turning them into concrete TA projects, learning content, or sessions. That made the transition to full-time feel more like an expansion of responsibilities rather than a completely new role. 

 

What is one piece of advice you would share with KINETIK Sweef interns aiming for a permanent role? 

Don’t be afraid to ask and chase people for clarity and instructions. The Program’s work is dynamic and fast-evolving, involving a wide range of stakeholders, so if you wait for everything to be laid out neatly for you, you’ll soon find yourself stuck. During my internship, I learned to proactively follow up, nudge people — yes, even bosses! — when I needed guidance, and to be comfortable with the feeling of over-communicating rather than assuming everyone knew what I was working on. 

That environment also pushes me to build my own way of working: simple systems, trackers, and routines that helped me stay on top of tasks even when things feel chaotic. Developing that habit of proactive communication and self-created structure was a big factor in being trusted with more responsibility and eventually moving into a permanent role.