Indonesian passenger transportation and online payments company Go-Jek said on Monday it has entered Vietnam and Thailand as a part of a $500 million international expansion.
In Vietnam, Go-Jek services might be provided by Go-Viet.
And in Thailand, Go-Jek’s local unit, Get, continues to “seek the advice of” with “various local stakeholders, including the federal government, driver partners and consumers.”
Go-Jek didn’t provide a launch schedule in its announcement today, but a source with knowledge of the plans told TechCrunch that Go-Viet will likely launch in August, with Get in Thai expected to follow a month later. It will launch within the Philippines later, but the time-frame is currently unspecified and easily “before the tip of 2018.”
Both recent firms will initially offer passenger transportation and logistics services, with food delivery and digital payments to be introduced at a later date, Go-Jek said.
As reported by TechCrunch, Go-Jek, Get and Go-Viet is not going to be interoperable. On the one hand, this provides local teams the flexibleness and autonomy to introduce services and adapt their offering to the local market, but it should mean that customers traveling between countries may have to download different applications.
“Our strategy is to mix world-class technology developed by GO-JEK, with deep market knowledge and experience of local teams, to create local businesses that actually understand consumers. We consider that these in-country teams have the knowledge and experience to make firms in Vietnam and Thailand an enormous success. They may use different brands, but they may operate based on the identical value system that has made Go-Jek the market leader in Indonesia,” explained Nadiem Makarim, founding father of Go-Jek, quoted by e27.co.
Grab, Go-Jek’s essential rival, raised $2.5 billion within the last 12 months and is now raising a brand new round that values its business at greater than $10 billion. The first investor confirmed for the brand new raise is Toyota, which has committed $1 billion in what might be the most important investment by an auto company in a passenger transportation service provider.
Go-Jek hasn’t raised as much as Grab, but it surely’s still well capitalized. Go-Jek’s international expansion follows the corporate’s latest round of funding, which included participation from investors resembling Astra International, Warburg Pincus, KKR, Meituan-Dianping, Tencent, Google and Temasek.
Source: Tech in Asia | Technical breakdown | e27.co | Channel NewsAsia
