Bukalapak Officially Launches "Artificial Intelligence & Cloud Computing Innovation Center" with ITB

As per its commitment to be more than just e-commerce, Bukalapak, with Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB) launching Bukalapak-ITB Artificial Intelligence & Cloud Computing Innovation Center.

This facility, to learn more about cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI), is expected to inspire students of fresh ideas using Bukalapak's data. Bukalapak claims to be the first local startup building a research center in Indonesia.

"As I was dreaming back then, when I found Bukalapak, is to create technology for Indonesia. Using this facility, I wish to deliver new digital talents in the future," Achmad Zaky, Bukalapak's CEO said.

Attended also in the launching, Prof.Dr.Ir. Kadarsah Suryadi, DEA, Rector of Institut Teknologi Bandung, welcoming Bukalapak and ITB Research Lab in the campus area. Hopefully, it could be helpful for the students to learn deeper knowledge from the experts.

Muhamad Nasir, Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education (Menristekdikti) said a similar thought. In his speech, he said its time for university to collaborate with practitioners and provide a whole education for students. Technology and related issues should have become curriculum-material.

"Start from the kind of industry like Bukalapak, hopefully, the government can fully support the initiative of building a Research Lab with ITB for the sake off new digital talents in Indonesia."

The use of Bukalapak's Big Data

One percent of Bukalapak's data is prepared for this lab and claimed to not harming user's data privacy and the business. The data selection is focused on general information, such as product description, etc.

This building, according to Bukalapak, can facilitate students and Researchers who interested to learn more about Bukalapak's user behavior without crawling or searching millions of products in Bukalapak website.

Data Research will be released to public and expected to stimulate those academists and researchers interested to learn based on Bukalapak's research.

Bukalapak collaboration with ITB is planned to be developed for research and innovation in other sectors.

"Not only education and research, I also expected to deliver new digital talents from ITB to join Bukalapak's team to develop AI and cloud computing together in the future," Zaky added.

Research focus

The synergy between AI and cloud computing is a reason behind Bukalapak and ITB to focus on those two technology. In Bukalapak, there are many teams in charge for cloud computing and company's server. It should be helpful for students to operate this technology.

AI technology to be deeper developed and explored is computer vision.In ITB, there are some subject related to AI, such as robotics, NLP, machine learning, data mining, and voice recognition.

"Currently, we have around 1000 engineers in total, consist of software engineer, product, and other. With the current source, Bukalapak is ready to help students to learn deeper knowledge," Zaky said.

– Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian