Gojek appoints Severan Rault as new Group CTO
Severan Rault, who held key roles at Amazon and Microsoft, comes in place of former Group CTO Ajey Gore, who recently resigned from Gojek.
Gojek, the Jakarta-headquartered tech startup, has announced the appointment of Severan Rault as the new Group Chief Technology Officer (CTO) in place of Ajey Gore who announced his departure last month.
Severan, a technology veteran with more 20 years of experience working at companies such as Amazon, Microsoft will manage Gojek’s engineering teams across Southeast Asia and India, according to a statement issued by the company.
The new CTO of Gojek is also a serial entrepreneur who founded wireless solutions firm Kikker Interactive, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2008, and virtual reality company Betawave, where he worked before moving to Gojek.
He had joined Gojek earlier this year as Head of Engineering for the company’s marketplace platform. Severan will report to Gojek Co-CEO, Kevin Aluwi.
Commenting on his appointment, Severan said: “It is a time like no other at Gojek. The company is entering a critical phase as it moves from startup to maturation and it’s special to be a part of that. Building systems and processes for a business of Gojek’s scale and complexity is a challenge one rarely enjoys in their career and I’m grateful for the opportunity.”
Former CTO Ajey had played a crucial role in leading and building the engineering team of the startup during its early growth years. Gojek also has an R&D centre in Bengaluru, India.
On the new CTO, Kevin Aluwi, Co-CEO of Gojek, said: “We are thrilled to have Severan take on the CTO role. His deep expertise, enthusiasm and leadership will enable us to take our products and services to even greater heights.”
Severan, as the Director of Software Development at Amazon, helped lead the team that founded Amazon Prime Air, the company’s drone delivery service.
At Microsoft, he held several leadership positions including Principal Architect of Bing, the company’s web search engine, and Principal Development Manager for Microsoft OneApp, a software application that enables feature phones to run popular mobile apps.
Edited by Saheli Sen Gupta