Southeast Asia’s ride-hailing war is being waged on motorbikes
New York Times|
Updated: Dec 12, 2017, 11.47 AM IST
By Raymond Zhong
JAKARTA: On a recent morning driving his motorbike for one of Asia’s fastest-growing tech startups, Nasrun picked up and dropped off four schoolchildren, an office worker, medicine from a pharmacy, some dumplings with peanut sauce, a few documents and an order of Japanese food, the last of which he took to a woman at the Indonesia Stock Exchange.
For his colleague Irawan, the workday started at midnight. He ferried someone home, then delivered an order of KFC. Around 4 am, he picked up a clubgoer so wobbly with drink that Irawan had to use one hand to steer and the other to keep the woman from falling off the back of his motorbike.
The two men work for Go-Jek, a $3-billion Indonesian startup whose maximalist approach to the ride-hailing business has put rivals like Uber on notice, and gotten the attention of American investors and Chinese internet titans alike.
The company’s main app lets you summon a car or motorbike driver who could just give you a lift, sure — but who could also bring you takeout, shop for groceries or deliver a present to someone across town.
With another Go-Jek app, Go-Life, you can hail someone to come cut your hair, give you a massage, clean your bathroom or change your car’s oil. And with the money you keep in Go-Jek’s digital wallet, you can pay your electricity bill, buy mobile data and book movie tickets — all within the app.
Go-Jek, which started its main app in 2015 and is in only Indonesia at the moment, is counting on people coming back to its services again and again as it competes against both Uber and Grab, a Singapore-based ridehailing company operating in seven Southeast Asian countries.
“We have huge respect for Uber as a technology company,” said Nadiem Makarim, Go-Jek’s 33-year-old founder. “But we just out-innovate them. We just move that much faster.”
Southeast Asia, a region of 600 million people that is adding more internet users each month than anywhere else on the planet, has become a magnet for tech investment — and one of the toughest battlegrounds for Uber, which is under pressure to curb its losses around the world ahead of a planned public offering.
Grab, which was valued at $6 billion after its latest fund-raising, recently said it had completed its billionth ride. By contrast, Lyft, Uber’s largest American rival, has reached half that. “It is a super growth market,” said Brooks Entwistle, chief business officer in Asia for Uber, which on Friday announced it had agreed to form a joint venture with a Singapore taxi company to strengthen its competitiveness in the region. “There’s no question there are challenges.”
China’s biggest tech companies, spying opportunity in the region, have contributed to those challenges.
Go-Jek is backed by Tencent Holdings, the video game and social media behemoth. Grab this year received a combined $2 billion in investment from Didi Chuxing, the ride-hailing powerhouse that outgunned Uber in China, and the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank.
JAKARTA: On a recent morning driving his motorbike for one of Asia’s fastest-growing tech startups, Nasrun picked up and dropped off four schoolchildren, an office worker, medicine from a pharmacy, some dumplings with peanut sauce, a few documents and an order of Japanese food, the last of which he took to a woman at the Indonesia Stock Exchange.
For his colleague Irawan, the workday started at midnight. He ferried someone home, then delivered an order of KFC. Around 4 am, he picked up a clubgoer so wobbly with drink that Irawan had to use one hand to steer and the other to keep the woman from falling off the back of his motorbike.
The two men work for Go-Jek, a $3-billion Indonesian startup whose maximalist approach to the ride-hailing business has put rivals like Uber on notice, and gotten the attention of American investors and Chinese internet titans alike.
The company’s main app lets you summon a car or motorbike driver who could just give you a lift, sure — but who could also bring you takeout, shop for groceries or deliver a present to someone across town.
With another Go-Jek app, Go-Life, you can hail someone to come cut your hair, give you a massage, clean your bathroom or change your car’s oil. And with the money you keep in Go-Jek’s digital wallet, you can pay your electricity bill, buy mobile data and book movie tickets — all within the app.
Go-Jek, which started its main app in 2015 and is in only Indonesia at the moment, is counting on people coming back to its services again and again as it competes against both Uber and Grab, a Singapore-based ridehailing company operating in seven Southeast Asian countries.
“We have huge respect for Uber as a technology company,” said Nadiem Makarim, Go-Jek’s 33-year-old founder. “But we just out-innovate them. We just move that much faster.”
Southeast Asia, a region of 600 million people that is adding more internet users each month than anywhere else on the planet, has become a magnet for tech investment — and one of the toughest battlegrounds for Uber, which is under pressure to curb its losses around the world ahead of a planned public offering.
Grab, which was valued at $6 billion after its latest fund-raising, recently said it had completed its billionth ride. By contrast, Lyft, Uber’s largest American rival, has reached half that. “It is a super growth market,” said Brooks Entwistle, chief business officer in Asia for Uber, which on Friday announced it had agreed to form a joint venture with a Singapore taxi company to strengthen its competitiveness in the region. “There’s no question there are challenges.”
China’s biggest tech companies, spying opportunity in the region, have contributed to those challenges.
Go-Jek is backed by Tencent Holdings, the video game and social media behemoth. Grab this year received a combined $2 billion in investment from Didi Chuxing, the ride-hailing powerhouse that outgunned Uber in China, and the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank.
