Features
26 Mar 19

Crushing Go-Jek: Grab to hit hard in Indonesia

Grab’s series H funding round was, and this is an understatement, a success. After having confirmed almost USD 3 billion a couple of months ago, Grab’s holding company has announced that the Softbank Vision Fund has brought another USD 1.46 billion to the table, totalling the investment at a stunning 4.5 billion.

Number 4 human cloud

Grab’s value is now estimated to be approximately USD 14 billion, putting the Singaporeans 4th of the list of human cloud companies, after Uber, Didi and Lyft. In terms of value growth however, Grab leads the ranking.

Grab has been extending on multiple levels: geography (now in 8 South-East Asian countries), services (from “ride” products, to lifestyle and food services and digital wallets) and M&As (the acquisition of Uber’s SEA branch in 2018).

Investments

The company confirms that it will continue its service expansion across South-East Asia, but also mentioned that it will be investing a significant portion of the 4.5 billion into Indonesia, home country of Grab’s main competitor, Go-Jek.

Go-Jek has booked some significant wins against Grab over the last year. It’s doing better than Grab in the Vietnamese market, where law suits are slowing down the Singaporeans and it has done what Grab was incapable of realising in Singapore: an agreement with one of the city-state’s largest taxi companies. In other words, it’s time for Grab to hit a home-run if it wants to stay the number one player in these markets.

Good for Indonesia

Therefore, it can hardly be called coincidental that Grab is targeting Indonesia, where Go-Jek owns almost half of the two-wheel market and is extremely popular for lifestyle home delivery services. Grab confirms that it will focus on transport, of course, but also food deliveries, logistics, payment services and hotel room bookings; one of its new investors is Booking Holdings, an online travel service.

It’s likely that the Indonesian population will witness a steep increase of online services and a tough pricing battle between Grab and Go-Jek. The game is on!

Authored by: Yves Helven