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Display until November 12, 2011 /// N0. 28
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Ciputra: Builder and Educator
Makasar and Manado — for possible locations for the medical facilities. However, it’s not all business to Ciputra, as he is also keen on devoting his time on philantropy and education. In 2006, Ciputra founded Universitas Ciputra to develop, he said, “the nation’s entrepreneurial spirit”. “We believe that the present world and the future world need all the entrepreneurs who have a burning entrepreneurial spirit, excellent characters and who will be able to be global players.” The Surabaya-based school is located on Ciputra’s own sub-urban satellite city Citra Raya, far from the town’s buzzing atmosphere. “Entrepreneurship holds the key to the future of the developing world. Entrepreneurship brought me from a state of childhood poverty to a life of philanthropy. And just as my own experience as an entrepreneur reaped rewards I never imagined, I believe embracing entrepreneurship will enable nations to make a "quantum leap" from despair to prosperity,” says Ciputra.
At a time when most successful people of his age would rest on their laurels and spend precious moments watching beautiful sunsets, property tycoon Ciputra, 80, is going full steam ahead by taking on giant urban projects. By Lukman Hakim
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One of his companies, PT Ciputra Development, this month allocated Rp 2 trillion ($224 million) to finance the Ciputra World superblock and high rise residential complex Ciputra World 2, both in Kuningan, Jakarta. The two projects are scheduled for completion by mid 2012 and mid 2014, respectively.
erty, Ciputra Group has invested in 27 cities throughout the country and three cities abroad. Instead of focusing its investment on Jakarta and the surrounding areas, they have chosen other cities like Kendari, Medan and Ambon. They are ready to launch its project in Tegal, Central Java, by the end of this month. Ciputra Group controls publicly traded Ciputra Development,
which in turn controls Ciputra Property, which manages hotels, office buildings and retail properties. Ciputra has properties in 27 cities across the country and in Hanoi, Phnom Penh and Shenyang, China. Recently, Ciputra Group announced its foray into hospital construction and management by planning to build two to �������
three hospitals annually over five years. The company is set to invest Rp 100 billion to Rp 200 billion ($11.3 million to $22.6 million) for each hospital, which will be called Ciputra Hospital. It plans to develop the hospitals in stages with a target of 10 to 15 within the next five years, spending as much as Rp 3 trillion. The company is looking at five cities — Jakarta, Surabaya, Palembang,
“The hardships of my childhood gave me the desire to make a better life for my family. I was born in a remote village of Sulawesi Island on August 24, 1931. When I was twelve years old, my father was taken prisoner by the enemy and imprisoned on false charges of espionage. He died in captivity. We never learned where he was buried. My family not only lost our father but our small grocery store as well. But I vowed not to remain poor,” he recalled recently. After graduating from senior high school in Manado, he entered the architecture department at ITB in Bandung. In 1957, together with Ismail Sofyan and Budi
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It is not for nothing that Ciputra has often been compared to his American counterpart, New Yorkbased Donald Trump. Another of his company, PT Ciputra Property Tbk., through its subsidiary PT Ciputra Balai Property, plans to build a new business center in Jakarta worth Rp 300 billion ($ 35.1
million). The new business center, Dipo Business Center (DBC), would be built on a 7,000-squaremeter area on Jakarta’s Jl. Gatot Subroto. The construction already started and is scheduled for completion by the second quarter of 2013. It comprises 15 home offices and an 18-storey office building with a total building area of 40,000 square meters. Ciputra Property operates Hotel Ciputra in Jakarta and Semarang, Mal Ciputra in Jakarta and Semarang, and Somerset Grand Citra Jakarta. Ciputra is also set to launch a total of five construction projects next year, the majority of which would be outside Java. Through its three subsidiaries, PT Ciputra Development Tbk, PT Ciputra Surya Tbk and PT Ciputra Prop-
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Brasali, college friends who would later become successful busnessmen in their own right, Ciputra founded PT Daya Cipta, an architecture firm in Jakarta, and later PT Pembangunan Jaya. In his long and illustrious career, Ciputra founded three large property development groups in Indonesia: Jaya Group, Metropolitan Group, and Ciputra Group. The groups currently employ more than 15,000 people and pay taxes in excess of $100 million annually. “I was so blessed by the invitation of President Barack Obama to be a panelist at the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship in April 2010 in Washington, D.C. Although I could not attend due to my health, I am so glad we were invited because we learned of the Global Entrepreneurship Program (GEP), a new opportunity in which the U.S. government promotes entrepreneurship among Muslim-majority countries. Indonesia was chosen to be the second pilot country,” he said. “I estimate that our country of 240 million people has just 400,000 entrepreneurs who build scalable, innovative companies. That’s less than 1% of the population. Compare that to 13% for the U.S. and 7% for nearby Singapore,” he says. He figures his university could change the country if he could help encourage, create and mentor 4 million entrepreneurs or 2% of the country’s population. “How do you do that? Not with venture capital, but by changing the country’s mindset,” Ciputra says. That, time will tell, may yet be his greatest contribution to the nation.