Josephine Jonggowisastro

Tour Director and Founder, Kiwi & Co. Travel Group Limited

Josephine was born in Indonesia but spent most of her formative years in New Zealand. With a diverse family ethnicity (Chinese, Philippines, and Indonesia), she developed her passion on cultural diversity, personal development and life discovery through her travels and pilgrimages.  Through her travels that fuelled her sense of exploration to discover new and inspiring things and places, she was inspired to know more about her self and her great sense of adventure both from within and wherever her feet leads her-  that something about not knowing what is to come next is exhilarating for her!

At the age of 24, she started her first venture exporting organic food products from Australia and America to Indonesia. She was her own traveling saleswoman; walked from the door of one supermarket to another in the buzzing Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia, finding herself rejected multiple times. With fortitude and perseverance, she finally gained traction and built relationship with some of the retail super market chains in Jakarta, with the likes of Jakarta Fruit Market chain. With these valuable experiences and learnings along the way, her entrepreneurial career started and was able to gain other opportunities though her successes and failures turned opportunities.

When Indonesia’s travelers’ growing keen interest on New Zealand in 2015, Josephine took the leap of faith to start her own specialized Inbound Tour Operating business catering to Indonesian independent travelers and private groups who wanted to visit and tour New Zealand. At the age of 26, Josephine founded Kiwi & Co. Inbound Tour Company. Her love for travel and finding the best deals has let her to realise the abundance and unexplored opportunities between Indonesia and New Zealand’s international tourism trade.

Kiwi & Co. specialises in providing Customised Private Tour for Indonesian travellers who wish to experience New Zealand from the eyes of the locals. All its tour guides and leaders are multi-lingual and are highly familiar with the culture, tradition, customs and needs of its Indonesian customers. Over the years, it fine-tuned its services and its quality of service that caught the interest of the many Independent Traveller groups and Private Tour groups market of Indonesia. Today, Kiwi & Co. has grown from servicing Indonesians living in Indonesia to Indonesians living overseas, such as in the USA, Singapore, and Malaysia. Just recently, it again expanded its coverages and it is now handling official Indonesian Government visits to New Zealand.

When Josephine is not working, she enjoys spending quality time with family and friend or finding herself travelling to the unexplored places of interest around New Zealand. She also loves the game of Tennis or running the streets and coast of the North Shore. On better days, you may find her participating in Start-up challenges across the country, with the most recent one, the Auckland Start-up Weekend May 2017, which her team brought home the First Prize.