We built Kugie to be the team we wished we had.
We kept watching smart Indonesian lifestyle brands stall because their digital team was a revolving door of vendors. So we built the team from the inside instead.
Founded to break the vendor model.
Sena and Gerald started Kugie after years inside larger product teams at Traveloka, ByteDance, L'Oréal, Google, and BCA. In each case, the same thing kept happening to brands around them: a founder would hire an agency to ship a website, the agency would ship it, and the brand would spend the next twelve months retrofitting the work into something real.
The problem was never the code. It was the handoff. A vendor optimizes for delivering a project, not for running the business that sits on top of it. By the time the first bugs surface, the team that built the site has already moved on. Another vendor picks up the pieces. The cycle starts again.
Kugie is the inverse of that pattern. We embed inside one brand at a time, we own the whole digital stack, and we stay. No handoffs, no rebuilds, no turnover between vendors. We read your roadmap before you read it, and we treat your brand like we own it.
Built by two engineers who kept seeing the same problem.
One client per vertical, one founder leading each half of the studio. Ask them anything during a call.
Setasena Ramadanie
CEO
Leads strategy and embeds with clients on product, commerce, and growth. Wrote the first line of every Kugie product.
Previously shipped products at Traveloka and Google.
Gerald Akbar
CTO
Owns the engineering and infrastructure side. Built and scaled the systems that run every embedded engagement.
Previously shipped products at BCA and Indodana
Shaped by the places the team has shipped products.
Our team has shipped products at Traveloka, ByteDance, L'Oréal, Google, and BCA. That experience is how we read your business, and it is the floor we build from. It is not a claim about past clients, because you deserve partners who are honest about the difference.
Four principles that shape every engagement.
We write these down because we will hold ourselves to them. If we drift, clients call us out, and we bring it back.
We join your team, not your vendor list.
You stop managing a vendor and start managing a colleague. We share calendars, standups, and goals. Decisions happen in your tools, not in a status report.
We only work with one brand in your vertical.
Focus compounds. When we embed with a coffee brand, we stop taking coffee-brand inquiries. Our pattern library becomes your pattern library, and your competitors stay out.
We retain IP and license it transparently.
Like Odoo Enterprise, we keep IP on the core platforms we build and license them back. You get a clear, term-based license, we get the leverage to keep investing in quality.
We grow with the brand, not the project.
No twelve-week contracts. Our floor is three months, but partnerships run for years. The win is compounding knowledge, not closing another SOW.
Let's build something that lasts.
Tell us about your brand. We respond within one working day.
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