Wendy Yap

President Director & CEO, Nippon Indosari Corpindo

- Ulisari Eslita

PT NIPPON INDOSARI Corpindo, known as Sari Roti, already controls about 90% of Indonesia’s mass market bread market, with its soft white loaves, single-serving sandwiches and other items to be found in 67,000 points of sale across the country. Sari Roti’s ten factories crank out more than four million pieces of bread products a day. Yet President Director and Chief Executive Wendy Yap is not satisfied with this dominant position.

Starting last year, she has embarked on an ambitious, multipronged, multi-year plan. It is Sari Roti’s largest-ever expansion since it was founded in 1995. The components of this expansion strategy touch upon nearly every aspect of Sari Roti’s business, and include building five new factories across the country, expanding to the Philippines and exploring other regional markets, expanding horizontally into new areas such as retail cafes and frozen dough, bringing in U.S. private equity giant KKR & Co as a strategic investor with a 15% stake, a rights issue last year that raised about Rp 1.4 trillion, and allocating about $225 million for capex this year.

Why the passion to move so fast and so big? The answer might be found in Wendy’s conversations that led to the start of Sari Roti with her father Piet Yap, the founder of the Bogasari flour mill (which supplies Sari Roti’s flour). Wendy had just sold, in 1994, the franchise rights to U.S. fast-food chain Wendy’s in Indonesia, China and Hong Kong. Searching for a new challenge, she talked to her father, who suggested bread, for its synergy with Bogasari. “I told him if I’m going to do it, I must do it mass market,” says Wendy. “It is the volumes that will bring you the margins, not the boutique bakery model.”