A room can look finished long before the work is done. The furniture is in place. The photographs are taken. Someone moves in, and a different set of questions begins: who handles the maintenance, how the bills get paid, whether the shared kitchen works for actual people with actual dinners. Sabrina Soewatdy’s career has moved steadily toward this less photogenic part of the design brief.
She trained in product design, studied interior architecture and founded a practice that worked on buildings, furniture and objects. Then, in 2019, she co-founded Rukita in Jakarta. The company connects rental housing with property management, marketing and services for owners. A room, in this arrangement, comes with a continuing relationship. The lovely chair has acquired an operations department.
That progression gives her story its particular shape. Sabrina did not arrive at housing solely through software or finance. She arrived with a designer’s education and a career in property. Her work now asks how the space, the service and the economics can hold together once a resident has unpacked.
A designer changes the scale
At Parsons School of Design in New York, Sabrina studied product design, completing her undergraduate studies in 2008. She continued at UCLA, where her studies focused on interior architecture. The sequence took her from the things people use to the spaces they occupy. Both require decisions about function that an attractive photograph can politely conceal.
In 2010, she founded Berm Design. The practice combined architecture and interiors with product and furniture design, and worked across New York, Tokyo and Jakarta. Its scope included collaborations with artists and local artisans. A custom object could belong to the same project as the room around it. The boundaries between disciplines were already fairly porous.
Her subsequent work included a vice presidency at ASSA Development, which her career record dates from 2014 to 2019. This placed design beside the practical work of development. Before Rukita had a name, Sabrina had experience with the physical side of property: the decisions and coordination required to get a project built.
The shift to a housing company therefore followed an existing interest. By 2019, she was applying that experience to a problem with a wider cast of participants. A tenant needed a suitable place to live. An owner needed a workable property business. Someone had to bring those interests into the same room.
A business with two sides of the door
Sabrina and her younger sister, Sarah, saw a combination of housing difficulties in Jakarta: limited suitable options, expensive property and journeys to work that consumed time and money. Their interest was in the whole arrangement of city living. A room’s price means rather less if getting from it to the office becomes a second occupation.
Rukita began with the kost, Indonesia’s familiar rented-room housing format, and a model of serviced coliving. It worked with property owners to improve assets and offer accommodation for students and working adults. Shared areas could provide places to meet other residents, while private rooms preserved the option of closing a door. Community is more appealing when it comes with that option.
The business developed several ways of participating in rental housing. Coliving and residences sat alongside property marketing, the Infokost marketplace and financing support through RuFinance. These services addressed different points in the process, from making a property available to helping it operate. The company’s ambition extended beyond introducing a renter to a listing.
That distinction matters when reading its scale. A marketplace can include homes operated by other people. Direct management means responsibility for a different set of tasks. Rukita’s current company overview lists more than 1,500 properties on its platform, including 346 directly managed properties, and says it has served more than 50,000 tenants across 21 Indonesian cities. The categories describe different relationships with a home.
Find it. Live in it.
Room discovery, payments and requests for services.
Prepare it. Operate it.
Property planning, marketing, management and financing support.
The sisters and the operating detail
Sabrina and Sarah brought different training to their shared venture. Sarah studied international relations and global business at the University of Southern California and worked in hospitality. In Rukita’s early leadership structure, Sabrina directed strategy and development as CEO; Sarah oversaw operations, partnerships, customer experience and community as COO.
There were other founders, too. The original team listed by Peak XV’s Surge includes Wei-Chuan Chew, Xu-Zonne Ho and YC Ng alongside the sisters. Their combined backgrounds spanned property, technology, hospitality and finance. The breadth fits a business whose promises depend on both digital systems and physical buildings.
The sisters also spoke publicly about who gets to lead a technology business. In 2023, women made up 41 percent of Rukita’s employees and 51 percent of its managers. Sabrina pointed to women leading across divisions, including product and technology. Those dated figures describe the organization at that moment; they also give substance to a discussion that can otherwise remain comfortably ceremonial.
For Sabrina, the question of design and function remained central to Rukita’s development. A resident experiences a company through small encounters: a request answered, a common space maintained, a payment made without confusion. These details make the gap between a proposed living experience and a lived one particularly easy to notice.
Fifteen million dollars, and the next month’s rent
In March 2024, Rukita announced a $15 million Series B1 funding round. New investors included MPower Partners, BNI Ventures, Openspace and basketball player Jeremy Lin. Existing backers also participated. For MPower, the investment marked its first entry into Southeast Asia.
The stated uses for the funding included technology development, expanded services and recruitment. Sabrina’s own announcement tied the new partnerships to Rukita’s environmental and social commitments, and to making quality living accessible. She also emphasized building a business able to support its ambition over time.
“We believe in creating impact with a sustainable business model.”
Sabrina Soewatdy, March 2024
Rental housing makes that combination unusually concrete. Owners need a reason to participate. Residents need a place that suits their budget and daily life. The company has to support the service between them. A successful funding round can finance the next stage, but a home keeps asking for attention every month.
Rukita’s tools reflect those recurring obligations. Its resident app handles tasks including payments and service requests; RuManage helps owners follow occupancy, property conditions and operating information. Software here has an ordinary destination. It is useful when it helps someone resolve the business of living somewhere.
She has also taken the discussion outside Rukita. In October 2021, she was listed among the speakers for the launch of the Founder Starter Pack, a startup guide presented by Indonesia’s 1000 Startup Digital initiative with Surge. The program concerned the questions founders face before a business becomes an established operation: developing an idea, understanding consumers and preparing to pitch.
By October 2024, her public conversations included financial literacy and entrepreneurship at the Indonesia Millennial and Gen-Z Summit. These are fitting subjects for someone running a company that sits between tenants’ budgets and owners’ assets. The financial arrangement shapes the living arrangement. A business can offer a handsome space, but the terms under which people can use it still determine who gets through the door.
Back to a house in Menteng
In September 2026, a project in Menteng offered a compact view of where Sabrina’s interests had led. Rukita opened Deluxe Vivara Menteng, converting an unoccupied house into a 30-room coliving property. The development took roughly twelve months and retained the main structure while changing the facade and interior layout.
Sabrina described respecting Menteng’s architectural identity as a priority. The project combined a classic-inspired exterior with Art Deco elements inside. Here was a familiar design task within her larger business: work out how a building should belong to its surroundings, then make it usable for the people who will inhabit it.
The company called it its fourth completed Build to Rent project. Its role covered planning and construction through marketing and daily operations. This is a long assignment for a building: decide what it can become, carry out the work, find residents and remain responsible after they arrive.
The same continuing responsibility now includes environmental decisions. Rukita joined the UN Global Compact in July 2025. In May 2026, it announced its inclusion in UN Global Compact Indonesia’s Impact Story 2025 publication. Its reported measures included LED lighting and the gradual use of solar water heaters in part of its portfolio. Sabrina linked the housing problem with environmental responsibility.
The room is allowed to change
Rukita’s phrase “Home That Grows With You” suggests a relationship that survives a change of address. A student may later need a different room, a working adult an apartment, a couple somewhere with more space. Sabrina’s stated ambition is to serve those changing needs with suitable housing and financial arrangements.
At the company’s December 2025 gathering, she reviewed the year’s performance and credited teamwork. The event also introduced Infokost and Uma as sub-brands within the wider living business. The company was still adding to the set of services around accommodation.
Sabrina’s career makes that expansion understandable. She has worked on objects, interiors and property development; now she leads a company concerned with how homes are found and run. The scale has changed, but the practical test remains close at hand. Someone comes home, puts down a bag and expects the place to work. There is always another day after the photograph.