Indonesia's Go-Jek completes first phase of Series F

Go-Jek said contributions also came from the likes of Mitsubishi Corporation and Provident Capital. The company is expected to raise around $2 billion in total for the round at a valuation of $9-10 billion, according to sources familiar with the situation. This compares to more than $5 billion for the Series E, which closed at $1.5 billion in March 2018. Other participants in that round included Temasek Holdings, BlackRock, KKR, Warburg Pincus, Sequoia Capital India, and Northstar Group.

The capital will go towards deepening Go-Jek’s penetration in Indonesia – where it is engaged in a fierce battle with Grab, which raised $3 billion in private funding last year – and expansion in Southeast Asia. The company entered Singapore, Vietnam (as Go-Viet) and Thailand (as Get) last year. It claims to be the largest mobile-on-demand and digital payments platform in the region, facilitating two billion transactions worth a cumulative $9 billion in 2018.

Go-Jek’s payments and food delivery services processed $6.3 billion and $2 billion, respectively, underlining how the company has successfully diversified a business that started out in 2011 as a call center service for booking the ojek motorcycle taxis that are part of urban life in Indonesia. The Go-Jek ecosystem now includes an array of delivery services and online-to-offline local services, as well as ride-hailing, food ordering, and financial services.

The company operates in 204 cities across five countries in Southeast Asia, offering services through a network of more than two million drivers and 400,000 merchants. Its app has been downloaded 130 million times. Grab, meanwhile, also claims 130 million downloads and a network of 8.5 million drivers, merchants and agents. It has a presence in 235 cities across eight countries. Grab has annual revenue of just over $1 billion; Go-Jek has not disclosed a comparable statistic.

Both companies have accumulated substantial strategic as well as financing backing. While automakers feature strongly in Grab’s investor base – Hyundai, Yamaha Motor and Toyota Motor Corporation are present – Go-Jek has won significant Chinese support. The Series E was conspicuous for the involvement of Indonesian giants Djarum Group and Astra International, but Tencent, JD.com and Meituan-Dianping featured as well, alongside Shunwei Capital Partners.

“Go-Jek has maintained leading market share and high growth in its core businesses, while making meaningful progress in new verticals. This additional investment will strengthen our alliance with Go-Jek in fast-growing Southeast Asia and enable Tencent to broaden its partner cooperation more globally,” said Martin Lau, president of Tencent, in a statement.

These Chinese tech giants want a piece of a Southeast Asian internet economy that is expected to be worth $240 billion by 2025. Despite rapid adoption of digital technology – 90% of internet users access services through their smart phones – there is scope for considerable growth. In Indonesia alone, ride-hailing and online food delivery penetration is estimated at 2-3%, with digital payments below 1%. In China, the penetration rates for these verticals are 14% and 15%, respectively.

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Expansion
• Technology
• Consumer
• Financials
• Go-Jek
• Growth capital
• TMT
• Tencent
• JD.com
• Google