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Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison CEO Vikram Sinha is positioning the company as a key enabler in the island nation’s AI renaissance
Speaking to journalists at MWC 2026, Indosat CEO Vikram Sinha reiterated the company’s ambition to pivot from a traditional telco to an “AI-native” powerhouse, saying success could help ‘fast track’ the nation towards its Golden Indonesia 2045 Vision goals.
“Our purpose is to empower Indonesia. The country is on a journey to become a developed nation […] and we believe that AI can be a great enabler,” said Sinha.
Calling AI Indosat’s “North Star”, Sinha explained the company’s approach to the technology as being built on three distinct pillars: first, embracing AI within its telco operations; second, evolving into an AI TechCo providing sovereign cloud services; and, finally, acting as a “nation shaper” for Indonesia’s future.
Indosat is already wholeheartedly embracing this first step, with Sinha emphasising that the company must first transform itself with AI before setting its sights further afield.
“We want to become an AI-native telco and embed AI into everything we do,” he said.
Indonesia perfectly positioned to become an AI leader
While many nations are racing to adopt AI, Sinha argues that Indonesia possesses unique structural advantages that make it ideal for AI development. To demonstrate this, he presented the “AI five-layer cake” – a model encapsulating five key foundational elements for AI success (Energy, Chips, Infrastructure, Models, and Applications), first made popular by NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang.
When it comes to the first of these elements – energy – Indonesia is very well positioned, generating substantial surplus power each year.
“When you talk about building AI factories and sovereign AI, a lot of countries struggle on energy, water, land. Indonesia has it in abundance,” said Sinha.
Moving up the ‘cake’ to chips and infrastructure, Indosat has already begun deploying GPU-based AI infrastructure and is scaling its data centre ambitions alongside global technology partners. Sinha highlighted the country’s efficient cost structure as a significant competitive advantage, with Indosat currently building data centres at roughly half the cost of those in Europe or the US.
“Because we are a low-ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) market, we have to be efficient. This makes our cost structure one of the best in the world for global customers,” he said, adding that the country’s unique geopolitical position also made it an attractive location for investment. “Indonesia has a clear philosophy of ‘friends to all’, with trade agreements with both the US and China.”
Partnerships with companies such as NVIDIA and Google Cloud are intended to accelerate the build-out of the ecosystem while ensuring local control over data and applications.
“In early days, when you talk about building infrastructure, you’re talking about building roads and highways. Now it is all about building digital infrastructure,” said Sinha. “This mission-critical for Indonesia.”
Finally, when it comes to AI models and applications, Indosat is building its own solution: the Sahabat AI platform.
Building sovereign AI infrastructure and ecosystems
Launched in 2024 and powered by NVIDIA GPUs, Sahabat AI is an open-source LLM designed specifically for Bahasa Indonesia and regional languages. Unlike general-purpose global models, Sahabat has been created as a “sovereign AI” ecosystem for Indonesia.
“We are not trying to compete with ChatGPT or Gemini,” said Sinha. “We want to focus on sovereign sensitive data and local language and cultural nuances.”
By providing the necessary compute power and infrastructure for Sahabat domestically, Indosat is fostering a local ecosystem for startups and innovators to co-create applications in essential sectors like agriculture, healthcare, and education.
Sinha is particularly adamant about the importance of keeping data and innovation within national borders to avoid “digital colonisation,” a risk he views as the greatest threat to emerging economies.
“We want to move from being a consumption market to a country which is into infrastructure and co-creation,” he said.
AI: The great equaliser
Beyond the commercial opportunity, Indosat is positioning AI as a driver of broader economic and social development. With a population of around 280 million spread across more than 17,000 islands, Sinha believes AI can play a critical role in addressing structural challenges in Indonesia.
“AI is a great equaliser,” he said. “We are looking at AI from a growth mindset – how it can empower humans.”
That philosophy shapes the company’s early use cases. One initiative uses AI to detect fraud and scam activity across the network. According to Sinha, the system has already blocked more than two billion suspicious communications and flagged millions of potential scammers.
“Our job is not only to connect, but also to protect,” Sinha said.
Other applications are focused on healthcare and agriculture, two sectors where digital tools could help bridge gaps in access and expertise. AI-enabled services could help doctors make faster diagnoses or provide farmers with more precise insights.
Crucially, Indosat says it is prioritising deployment beyond major urban centres.
“It has to help the most deserving,” Sinha said, describing how early AI initiatives were piloted in rural eastern Indonesia rather than the metropolis of Jakarta.
Ultimately, Sinha sees the operator’s AI strategy as closely tied to Indonesia’s long-term development ambitions. By combining connectivity, compute and local innovation, he believes the country can evolve from a digital consumer to a global creator economy.
“If the country is doing well, all of us will do well,” he said.
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