Breaking: Kaskus COO Sukan Makmuri Takes CEO Seat, Ken Dean Grabs Chairman & Advisory Role

We just received confirmation that Kaskus CEO Ken Dean Lawadinata has officially stepped down and the position is now taken by its recently appointed Chief Operating Officer, Sukan Makmuri. From now on, Lawadinata will hold the position of Chairman of Kaskus with an advisory role for the company while Andrew Darwis, the company's co-founder and CTO, will revert to Chief Community Officer.

Makmuri is a relatively new face in the company but he has had a significant experience in the technology industry. In the mid 1990s he was the VP of Internet Banking Technology at Bank of America before returning to running technology companies in California. Since September 2013, Sukan joined GDP Venture before being given the task to become the head of operations at Kaskus. Under Makmuri's leadership, Kaskus is expected to leverage the company's strategic position and launch a number of new products and services to maintain its lead among Indonesian internet companies.

Kaskus had begun searching for a new executive leader since 2011 when GDP Venture made a sizable investment in the company, with an aim to streamline Kaskus and enter new markets. As one of the local companies in Alexa's top 10 Indonesian traffic list, Kaskus will need to expand its efforts to widen its market for its business expansion.

Kaskus is a benchmark for many online businesses and is constantly under the spotlight from people inside and outside Indonesia as it is considered as one of the more successful online companies. One of the company's key to success, according to a lot of internet business enthusiasts, is to capitalise the transactions happening inside their forum platform. Let's wait and see how Makmuri's leadership will transform Kaskus into a company that is more in tune with today's Internet environment.

Photo by Pat Chan

 [Kaskus and DailySocial are part of a group of companies operating under GDP Venture]