Gemini Aryanto on putting AI in front of 9,500 baristas without cutting a single role.
Kopi Kenangan runs HR for a blended workforce of 9,500+ people across 5+ markets, most of them baristas, and is an HR Asia Best Companies to Work For in Asia honouree. In a new video with Darwinbox, Group Chief People & Culture Officer Gemini Aryanto describes what that scale does to an HR operating model.
The pressure point was repetition. Frontline employees needed immediate answers on leave, benefits, and entitlements, and the same questions came in 10 to 20 times a day. Answering them took 50 to 60 percent of the HR team’s bandwidth, leaving it always reactive.
Darwinbox AI agents now handle most of those queries, and the design choice that made adoption possible was language. Employees state what they need in English or Bahasa Indonesia, so a barista asks the agent directly rather than routing the question through an HRBP or a colleague who can translate. Query redressal for the HR team has since fallen by 50 to 60 percent. Watch the video here.
The operating volume behind that is real: 47,000 workflow transactions, 361,000 attendance registrations, and 22,000 leave requests a year, with data sanctity maintained by correcting entries at source. Aryanto frames the result as a change in how HR works, from transactional work to designing the workflows that support expansion.
Kopi Kenangan is also explicit about what it refused to do. Many companies adopt AI and reduce the workforce. Kopi Kenangan took the opposite position: keep the same headcount, enhance it with AI, and let that team manage a workforce twice the size. No restructuring, no severance, no layoffs.
FAQs
What do Darwinbox AI agents do for Kopi Kenangan’s frontline employees?
Darwinbox AI agents answer frontline questions about leave balances, benefits, and entitlements directly. Those questions previously arrived 10 to 20 times a day, and query redressal for the Kopi Kenangan HR team has since fallen by 50 to 60 percent.
Why does a multilingual AI agent matter in Indonesia?
Indonesia is not an English-speaking country, and Kopi Kenangan’s frontline workforce needs HR support in local language. Because the Darwinbox agent accepts English or Bahasa Indonesia, employees ask directly instead of relying on an HRBP or an English-speaking colleague to ask on their behalf, which Gemini Aryanto identifies as crucial to adoption.
How is Kopi Kenangan using AI without reducing headcount?
Kopi Kenangan made a deliberate decision not to use AI to cut roles. Gemini Aryanto states that the company keeps the same headcount, enhances it with AI capability, and expects that team to manage a workforce twice its current size without restructuring or severance.
