Yuke entices customers with doves

Kanis Dursin, The Jakarta Post

Most people would think of birds, particularly white doves, as symbols of peace, but for Yuke E. Susiloputro, president director of PT Lippo Cikarang Tbk, the birds led to a thriving property business.

Back in 1994, PT Lippo Cikarang launched its maiden house units in Cikarang, Bekasi, West Java. While people rushed to buy the units, Yuke noticed that only a handful actually occupied them.

"We bought some 5,000 birds of various kinds and released them in the compound," said Yuke, who joined the Lippo Group in 1992, immediately after he returned from the United States, where he studied and worked for 14 years.

"Up until now we have so many birds here -- chirping," said the husband of Kiki Susiloputro, who is director of Lippo Cikarang's Water Boom, a major attraction in Bekasi.

The trick worked wonders for Yuke, who designed the housing and industrial complex. Around 7,000 families now live in Lippo Cikarang, which has rapidly developed from a ghost village into a bustling, self-sustaining town.

Birds, however, were just one of a wide range of incentives Lippo Cikarang devised to attract consumers to buy a house and stay there. Yuke said that his company also offers 'after-sales services' to residents who stay in the complex.

"If their toilets are clogged or roofs leak, they just call us up and we will come within 10 minutes to fix them. Also if their telephone lines are not working or if they have electricity problems, they can just call us and we will report to Telkom and PLN. We attend to their complaints immediately," said the father of eight-year-old Raka Susiloputro and Arka Susiloputro, six years.

On top of that, security is very tight in the compound. House units are built in clusters according to their types and each cluster has its own security guards. "We want the residents to really feel safe living here," said Yuke, who won an international house design competition organized by the American Institute of Architecture in 1986.

It is no surprise, therefore, that Lippo Cikarang has continued to attract people to stay there. Currently, there are some 30,000 people of the middle-income group and middle to low- income group, including some 400 foreigners, living in over 7,000 houses in the complex.

Born in Surabaya, East Java in 1959, Yuke grew up in Kudus, East Java, where he finished senior high school. After finishing school, Yuke was sent him to the United States in 1978 to enroll in a medical school there.

"I took up medicine because my father wanted me to become a doctor. But, I did not really study. I did my exams in five minutes and than left the classroom. Luckily, I passed the exams, although my grades were mostly Ds, the passing grade," said Yuke, whose father was also a medical doctor.

In 1982, however, Yuke, the only child in the family, rebelled against his father and quit medical school. In 1983 he enrolled at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, the only architecture school in California that specializes in design.

Yuke, who was given an ultimatum by his father to finish his studies as soon as possible or stand on his own, studied very hard. He went to the school's library virtually every day to study.

"I completed a five-year program in three years. I took 24 units every semester. One time, the school summoned me and told me that I could not take 24 units per semester. I argued that I had passed all the exams. So, since then the school allows students to take up to 24 units per semester if they want," he recalled.

The key to his academic success, according to Yuke, was teamwork. "I had two close friends, one from Iran and the other from Lebanon. We always studied together. Each of us was assigned to study certain subjects only and when examinations came, we would share what we had studied with the other two. We were so close that our classmates called us the three musketeers," he recalled.

Upon completing his bachelor's degree, Yuke got a two-year scholarship from NASA for his master's degree. It was then that Yuke won an international house design competition organized by the American Institute of Architecture in 1986.

"I did not really intend to join the competition, but my professor secretly submitted by design, which was my thesis, to the organizing committee. All of a sudden news about me winning the competition appeared in newspapers with my picture. People called me to congratulate me, but I was confused as I did not know what was happening. Only then my professor told me that he had submitted my design," he said, adding that the design that won the competition was a space module which NASA still uses until now.

Upon graduating in 1986, Yuke and his two friends set up a firm in the United States. The company, however, did not last as his two friends returned to their countries shortly after.

Yuke, who reads architecture books and draws in his free time, returned to Indonesia in 1992 and joined the Lippo Group as the chief planner of the Lippo Cikarang residential and industrial compound.

Looking to the future plans, Yuke said Lippo Cikarang wanted to develop a better quality housing complex.

"We foresee the future is very good. We have developed housing complexes for the middle income and middle to low income market. Now, it's time to build houses for the middle and middle to upper income groups. The infrastructure must be good. The landscaping and building must be better than what we have now and the clusters must be smaller, but the houses bigger," he said.