♪ haslinda: hello. i am haslinda amin in singapore. she says it is not about the profit, it is about the impact. shinta kamdani has built her family business into one of indonesia's largest conglomerates. and as a chinese woman in mainly muslim indonesia. an angel investor passionate about progress, shinta kamdani is today's highflyer. ♪ haslinda: sintesa group is a

billion dollar company, indonesia's biggest distributor of consumer goods. it is also into real estate, and renewable energy. at it head is a mother of four who champions gender equality. a woman who uses her role to help other women. shinta kamdani has become a beacon for indonesian business, inspired by what she calls her journey of national service. ♪ haslinda: shinta kamdani, thank you for being on "high flyers." such a pleasure to have you with us today. the pleasure is mine. haslinda: the company has its roots three generations ago. your grandfather started it in 1919 as a rubber plantation, but

your dad took over and expanded it into industrial manufacturing and property as well. then you came along at the tender age of 32 and changed everything. what a gutsy move. why did you do it? shinta: well, first of all i think when i was exposed with the business since i was young, right, so i have an understanding of how the business is, but at the end of the day, i see the company so identified with him. i find, as an organization, we have to transfer ourselves from a family business to more professional management and have a longer perspective in terms of how we want to manage the company. so i came up in 1999 -- this is interesting, because in the span

of 40 years, we do not plan. 1919-1959, it is 40 years. at that time i told my father, i said if you want me to continue in the business, this is how i see my dream is for the business, and i fully understand that he has his own idea of how he wants it to run, but i feel like this is where we should go. haslinda: what did you do? what did you change? i know you changed everything. but what did you do? shinta: first of all i brought in -- institutionalized the whole organization. we never have a vision, we never have corporate values. those are basic, the most

important things. how can an organization don't have a clear -- as long as everybody follows me and sees how we would do it, right? so i said it was important that we have one in terms of vision and core values our identity, and how we want to do strategic wise through operating and holding. that is why we set up a holding company, to be able to monitor how we can develop our investment. haslinda: what was the response from your father? was he receptive? how difficult was it to -- : he said, who are you? i've built this business. i know what is right for this business. don't come with your foreign graduate crap. [laughter] he did not think i was important. but i know one thing, i know he

does want me to continue, and he realized that he doesn't want to run this forever on his own, that he needs to have that future, and i am part of that future, so he kind of said, let's see whether your way will work, right? i said we have to focus. we can't just be doing anything. we have different businesses that we are not experts in. that's why i put the fourth pillar. it was very important. the consumer industrial property and the renewable energy sector comes afterwards. haslinda: was this difficult because you are a woman, the daughter, not a son in a chinese family? does it make additionally difficult for you? shinta: very. i break the ceiling every day, especially with my parents, my father specifically. as an immigrant of chinese

descent,descent, you always thie boy will run the show, he will run the empire. he doesn't have boys. obviously he is stuck with two ceilings, not only a daughter, but a chinese, which is i -- a minority in indonesia, and non-muslim in a predominantly muslim country. >> they call me a triple minority because i'm a woman, chinese, and the non-muslim,

we are talking about in our blog oh. -- archipelago, 17,000 islands, some so remote you cannot get to them. what is the solution here? from yours perspective, how do you help these people? shinta: first of all, there has to be a clear -- i come from the private sector, ok? i always believed that yes, i always believed that yes, government plays a role, plus the private sector and the big corporations need to join hands and collaborate. why? because a lot of these remote areas have no access. that is why we start having projects in some of the remote

areas that we would not be able there has to be a way that they look at this on the social component. that is why we have solar projects, solar cells and some of that in some remote areas that would not have electricity. -- in some remote areas that would not have electricity. the private sector businesses look at it. this is not just a government job. we need to participate in this. haslinda: earlier you talked about how numbers are not so important so you don't track how big you are, but there must be a vision, 5-10 years down the road, where do you see sintesa and what would you like to achieve? shinta: i'm pretty serious when i don't look at the number. it is important. we do want to double our size in five years time. haslinda: do you see yourself as a regional player, global player at some stage? shinta: at the moment we are a local indonesian company, ok?

it does not stop us from one-day going out of indonesia to other asian countries, but we believe the potential of indonesia is still so great that we are still needed at home. so we want to be very careful when we expand ourselves outside. we want to know which area, which sector, and something that we can really feel we have the expert to do it in some other countries. and we are looking at vietnam, for example. even myanmar is open. so perhaps moving in that direction, but at the moment there is still plenty of work. haslinda: four pillars to your businesses. two have been listed. the other two will be listed as well? shinta: yes. this is why i think governess is veryrnance important. listing is not just about

fundraising, but direct governance. our plan is to have all the four pillars eventually listed, so we now have two, and the other two , the department of energy can hopefully go public as well. we want to remain an investment holding as a private company, but we are going in the direction of being a listed company for all our operations. ♪ so i started the first fund for women. i call it woman-to-woman. i brought up my close friends who are successful entrepreneurs. they put in money, and we invest in woman startups. ♪

♪ haslinda: you were born into a family of entrepreneurs. what was it like growing up? shinta: business has always been part of our growing up, during meals, there is always business talk. my father would take me to the office, so i have always been exposed from a very early age. it is like part of our life.

haslinda: you knew from very early on that you wanted to run the business? shinta: i look at him and look up to him and say, oh my gosh, i want to be like him, right, so it gives me motivation. he never said i would eventually run the business, but it does give me a drive to say one-day i would want to run the business. haslinda: at age 13 you went door to door selling books. you did not need to. it was not about additional pocket money. why did you do it then? shinta: i thought a sales job is the best way of learning how to actually do work the dirty way. because you are on the ground and have to make cold calls. you have to convince people to buy something. you don't even really know, but that i thought would be a very challenging experience, and i do feel that i can learn a lot from it. haslinda: a lot of people are

asking, how do you manage? a mother of four running a thriving company. at the same time, you are appointed as advisor to the vice president of indonesia, while promoting initiatives empowering women in the country. how do you manage this and what is the motivation behind everything you do? shinta: woman empowerment is a very big thing in indonesia. i find that although we are promoting gender equality, there are already more women being in the workplace. i still find that there are some -- how to say -- treatment that sometimes are not really fair. so i find that -- this is not just women in the big city. when were talking about women in the smaller places, the culture

position, that the woman has to be behind the man, so even though the woman does most of the work come in they cannot claim this is their business. so i think they can is me -- and is my motivation to say, come on, woman, let's go and get this network going, right? [laughter] haslinda: so what do you do? shinta: there are two aspects. first of all, i find a different ownership -- entrepreneurship is the key factor in the development of growth in indonesia. we just on have enough jobs, right? i started an entrepreneurship organization to provide an ecosystem. so providing training, basics, doing the right way of supporting entrepreneurs, but of of course, excess financing a very, very big part. and financial institutions does like to give financing to people who do not give collateral, right?

so i thought angel investing is the best way to support some of these startups. i thought maybe i will tackle the woman part first. i started the first fund for women. i call it woman-to-woman. these angel investment funds, i brought up my close friends, successful entrepreneurs, and said let's put in money and we invest in woman startups. but the second part i did is i find that women in the workplace, many corporations across multinationals, are already doing this. gender equality program on recruitment, supporting facilities like day care, but a lot of the local companies doesn't understand what this is all about, and many women lost the opportunities to be part of that potential career path

because they do not have -- they need a life-work balance. they can accelerate in their careers, but have the balance of being a mother and a wife, so i think that is then how i started the woman empowerment business council, to bring in more companies to look at this program. more in the women in the workplace and start developing what does it mean to be that. haslinda: you talk about micro-financing. isn't it true the idea came about during the riots where hundreds of companies were destroyed and people were killed and you felt you wanted to give more than just money? shinta: yes. at that time, when the 1988 riot happened, we -- you know -- i thought there was so many help and be ngo came in. actually what is the most important is those businesses that were destroyed need to

be picked out, they need to restart their businesses. so this is where the idea came for the micro-finance program for those businesses that were destroyed. that is how i started it. i thought i just don't want to give money. this is not about charity. i want to do something if they rebuild their business, it will help them on the longer term. haslinda: if you were to stand on a rooftop of a building in jakarta and see all those skyscrapers of which you helped build, because they use the cement produced by your company, feel,oes that make you having contributed to the development of a country and to see where it is today? shinta: i have to say indonesia has many, many potentials. i give now part of my work for national services because i believe in my country. and i believe in a lot of the work that needs to be done for my country. we have a long way to go. we have a good leader who has a great vision for indonesia, but

unfortunately this is not one-man work. even with a little thing that i can do, i want to help bring indonesia to the world. we are now on the map. we are a destination for investment. i want to be able to bring and promote indonesia for foreign investment to come as well. and i want to be part of indonesia, that this is my home and will always be my home, so despite whatever happens politically, i believe we can't give up and we have to continue working together as a nation to really believe that indonesia will eventually be one of the biggest economies in the world. haslinda: shinta kamdani, thank you so much for being on "high flyers." it is such a pleasure. shinta: thank you very much. ♪

♪ jonathan: from j.p. morgan's asset management trading floor, i'm jonathan ferro. with 30 minutes dedicated to fixed income, this is "bloomberg real yield." ♪ jonathan: goldilocks dominating 2018 again. central banks say yes, predicting high-growth and low inflation. tax negotiators hours away from making a congressional compromise. uneasy calm hangs over treasuries. is this the year credit fails to match a massive rally in equity? we begin with the big issue, high-growth and low inflation in 2018. janet yellen: real gdp growth is