Gita Sjahrir is the Co-Founder of RIDE Jakarta, Indonesia’s first boutique indoor cycling studio. She was inspired to create an active community in Indonesia when she found wellness and health through fitness after battling systemic rheumatoid arthritis for 15 years. Prior to RIDE, Gita worked in the corporate world for years and specialized in business development and general management in Singapore, Indonesia, the Middle East and the United States. Whilst attending The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania for her M.B.A. program, she fell in love with the world of entrepreneurship and fitness. She moved to Indonesia with the hopes of creating a startup in the wellness sector. Three years later, RIDE Jakarta became the first boutique fitness brand in Indonesia to ever receive venture capital funding. The company’s flagship is in Plaza Indonesia, and it is now expanding to 4 locations in Jakarta in 2018, with plans to enter Bali, Surabaya and other promising markets. RIDE has also collaborated with multiple leading lifestyle brands, including SaladStop, Love Bonito, Nike, The Potatohead Group, Hotel Monopoli and many others. The studio has been covered in over 250 media outlets, including The Jakarta Post, CNN Indonesia, Cosmopolitan, Yahoo News Singapore, Metro TV and Kompas. As a budding business owner in the growing lifestyle and fitness space, Gita also actively shares her journey as an entrepreneur through regional conferences, lectures and coverage, including speaking engagements in ITB (Indonesia Institute of Technology), Tatler Indonesia, Ideafest 2018 at Jakarta Convention Centre, CocoWork, G360 Lifestyle Summit, @America U.S. Cultural Center, Lean Startup Indonesia, Busy Woman Project Singapore, and others. Gita currently runs RIDE Jakarta full time and stays committed to her active lifestyle through her work as a Nike affiliated athlete, RIDE’s Director of Training, and as an Instructor for Indonesian Krav Maga, one of the only two female IKM teachers in Indonesia.
Photo credit: Heri B. Heryanto/Indonesia Tatler