For those who haven’t heard about Go-Jek yet, here is what I learned about the ride-hailing startup. Founded by Nadiem Makarim in 2010, Go-Jek is a leading provider of on-demand transportation, food delivery, logistics, and mobile payment services in Indonesia. It was founded with the aim of bettering the lives of underemployed motorcycle taxi and cab drivers, by providing a whole new set of opportunities in the form of transportation and food delivery orders. Go-Jek, which began as a bike taxi company, currently has over 200,000 drivers across 25 cities in Indonesia. Why bike taxis? They are highly effective in most of the busy and congested streets in Indonesia. Over the years, Go-Jek has grown by leaps and bounds, expanding their business and advancing into car-hailing and several other areas like grocery and meals delivery services. GoCar, its car-hailing service, is similar to Uber and Singapore-based Grab. The Go-Jek app was launched in 2015. The app has till now amassed about 10 million downloads, with a user rating of 4.3 on Google Play Store. It is quite admirable (Uber enjoys a 4.2 rating and so does Lyft, whereas the rating of Grab is 4.5.).
In addition to its commendable presence in the home market, Go-Jek has a strong development team in India as well. The company acquired C42 Engineering and CodeIgnition in 2016. Go-Jek has bettered the lives of almost a million bike taxi and cab drivers, and empowered as many as 100, 000 restaurant partners and many other small and medium businesses across Indonesia. Isn't that a praiseworthy achievement, given the intensifying market competition and increasing customer expectations? Recently, Go-Jek acquired three financial technology businesses Kartuku, Midtrans, and Mapan, thus foraying into digital payment services, aiming to become a major player in Indonesia’s payment sector. Go-Jek may soon expand their business with overseas operations, boost rider and driver subsidies, and develop their digital payment business. The new magnanimous funding will undoubtedly give Go-Jek an upper hand while facing market competition from deep-pocketed competitors.
Southeast Asia’s largest internet economy, Indonesia alone is home to nearly 261 million people. Yet, the current Uber CEO said in a statement that Southeast Asia is unprofitable (as per a TechCrunch article). I can't figure out the rationale behind his words, given that Southeast Asia has more than 600 million customer currently. It sounds like a defensive effort to conceal Uber's inability to keep up its foothold in Southeast Asian market. Growth of ride hailing industry in the region is expected to hit $20.1 billion per year by 2025, says a report co-authored by Google. Will Go-Jek become the next Uber or Grab, or surpass them all in growth, profitability and customer satisfaction? Have to wait and watch.