Southeast Asia’s Ride-Hailing War Is Being Waged on Motorbikes
- 6 years ago
Southeast Asia’s Ride-Hailing War Is Being Waged on Motorbikes
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 ride-hailing company operating in seven Southeast Asian countries.
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.
JAKARTA, Indonesia — On a recent morning driving his motorbike for one of Asia’s fastest-growing tech start-ups, 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.
“The playbook was clear.”
It is no accident that Jakarta has attracted so many companies
that help people get around — or that help them avoid having to get around in the first place.
The two men work for Go-Jek, a $3 billion Indonesian start-up 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.
“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.
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 ride-hailing company operating in seven Southeast Asian countries.
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.
JAKARTA, Indonesia — On a recent morning driving his motorbike for one of Asia’s fastest-growing tech start-ups, 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.
“The playbook was clear.”
It is no accident that Jakarta has attracted so many companies
that help people get around — or that help them avoid having to get around in the first place.
The two men work for Go-Jek, a $3 billion Indonesian start-up 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.
“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.