When Bobby Yulandika Putra heard his name called on the main stage of the EU-Startups Summit in Valletta, Malta, on the evening of May 8, it felt surreal for him. The trophy was for Founder of the Year at the 2026 Global Startup Awards (GSA) Grand Finale.

“What hit me was not the feeling of winning,” Bobby said in a conversation with UIII Media team after returning to Jakarta. “It was the feeling that Indonesia was on that stage.”

The GSA is widely regarded as one of the most geographically inclusive startup competitions in the world. Its tournament-style format requires founders to first win a regional round — covering Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa, the Americas, and the Middle East — before advancing to the Grand Finale. Bobby cleared the Southeast Asia regional in April 2026 before flying to Malta to compete against six other regional champions.

The Grand Finale was held alongside the EU-Startups Summit, one of Europe’s largest technology gatherings, drawing investors, founders, and ecosystem builders from more than 80 countries.

Fifteen Years Inside the Machine

The award did not emerge from nowhere. Bobby spent more than 15 years working inside Indonesia’s financial risk management sector — as Financial Risk Country Manager at AIA Financial, Risk Management Division Head at Bank of India Indonesia, and in sharia risk policy at BTPN.

Across those institutions, he said, the same pattern repeated itself: risk teams relying on spreadsheets, reporting cycles measured in weeks rather than hours, and incidents that a functioning early-warning system could have prevented.

“The pain was real,” he said. “I felt it directly. That is what gave me the confidence to stop building frameworks inside a single institution and start building a platform for the whole industry.”

He founded Prospero as a solo venture in 2022, spending the first three years building the product, landing early clients, and navigating the accelerator circuit. The decisive turning point came in 2025 at the Young Entrepreneur Summit in Bremen, Germany, where Bobby placed third and met Paul-Adrian Mandravel, the prior year’s runner-up — a founder with a decade of experience building enterprise-scale platforms. They shared a mentor. Within months, Paul had joined as co-founder.

Built in Indonesia. Built for the World.

Today, Prospero operates as an integrated enterprise risk intelligence platform built around three product lines: Prospero ERMS, which handles risk registers, issue management, and real-time monitoring; Prospero Learning, a library of more than 180 certified risk management curricula; and Prospero Consulting, which provides strategic advisory services.

The division of labour between the two co-founders is, by Bobby’s description, straightforward: “I understand the industry problem. Paul builds the technology.”

The company’s tagline — “Built in Indonesia. Built for the world.” — is one Bobby said the Malta award now validates in the most direct way possible. “Many Southeast Asian founders carry this question: is our product good enough for the global stage?” he said. “This answers that question.”

Research and Practice, Converging

The win carries particular significance given Bobby’s current academic position. He is a PhD candidate in Economics at the faculty of Economics and Business of UIII, enrolled in the 2025 intake, with research focused on risk frameworks for emerging-market enterprises — exactly the problem domain Prospero was built to address.

“The award is not separate from my studies,” he said. “It reinforces that the research questions I am working on at UIII have practical relevance on a global stage.”

Bobby said he also sees the recognition as a statement about Indonesian academia. UIII, established in 2019, is among the country’s newer research universities. That one of its doctoral candidates is now a globally recognised startup founder is, he suggested, part of the institution’s own emerging story.

Beyond the Trophy

Bobby is measured about what the award actually delivers. He identifies three things that matter beyond the symbolism.

The first is global validation — a credible signal to prospective clients, partners, and investors that Prospero competes at the highest level. The second is network access: the GSA Grand Finale and the EU-Startups Summit brought him into direct contact with founders from more than 80 countries and a range of European investors that would otherwise have required months to reach. The third is momentum, arriving, he said, at precisely the right time as Prospero prepares to scale cross-border and enter institutional fundraising conversations.

“A recognition like this becomes a multiplier for every conversation you are already having,” he said.

For the night itself, though, Bobby returns to a simpler image: a red-and-white flag on a large screen in the middle of Europe, and a trophy heading home to Indonesia.

“This is not one person’s victory,” he said. “It belongs to everyone who believed in this journey long before there was a trophy to show for it.”