Smart City Builder

Smart city ecosystem platform Qlue makes cities smarter and better places to live in.

- Marella Putri

In 2018, Jakarta was a home to over 10.4 million people. With a national urbaniza-tion rate of 4.4% as stated by World Bank in 2016, the largest city in Southeast Asia must transform into a better place to live. One way is to transform into a smart city; the concept of a city or urban area that incorporates information and communication technology (ICT) and the internet of things (IoT) to improve citizens’ welfare. Smart city ecosystem platform Qlue (PT Qlue Performa Indonesia) plays a crucial role in developing the Jakarta Smart City (JSC) program. The company was founded by Raditya Maulana “Rama” Rusdi and Andre Hutagalung, currently the startup’s CEO and CTO, respectively.

Qlue’s establishment began from Rama’s concern at the number of Jakarta’s problems, and how the city government couldn’t solve these because of the lack of a communications channel. His team was a thriving software house back then, serving clients from both the private sector and government. They designed Qlue App as one of their products, which functioned as a platform for people to report problems and the government to solve them.

“That’s where our name came from. Give them a clue about what’s going on in the city— mostly issues for them to actually fix,” says Rama.

Enabled with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning from the beginning, it is also able to predict traffic jams and flooding. On the other side of the app, on-ground officials will receive reports in their area according to their job. Hence, each problem can be solved immediately, monitored from the app’s dashboard, and analyzed at the command center.