GoTo Group has over 11 million monthly active users, the companies said, with its business encompassing 2% of Indonesia's GDP of over $1 trillion. It later expanded to provide financial services such as digital payments and lending services. Tokopedia was founded in 2009 by William Tanuwijaya and has expanded to become Indonesia's largest e-commerce firm. Makarim stepped down as CEO in October 2019 after taking on a ministerial position in the Indonesian government, and Soelistyo, together with Kevin Aluwi, were named co-CEOs. It has since expanded to provide not just ride-hailing but also a variety of on-demand services, including food delivery. Gojek was founded in 2010 by Nadiem Makarim as a call center for motorbike taxis, known as "Ojek" in Indonesia. 1: Tokopedia SPAC Merger News SPAC: Bridgetown Holdings (NASDAQ:BTWN) Private Company: Tokopedia Shares of BTWN stock got a boost this week on news of a. GoTo's rival Grab also provides ride-hailing and on-demand services across eight countries in Southeast Asia, including Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, while internet firm Sea Limited has made a massive push into e-commerce in Asia with its Shopee e-commerce platform. The merger of Gojek and Tokopedia comes as competition is heating up in Southeast Asia, where technology companies compete for the wallets of over 650 million people. He said that the company intends to promote financial inclusion while providing "best in class" delivery of goods and services. "Today is a truly historic day as we mark the beginning of GoTo and the next phase of growth for Gojek, Tokopedia and GoTo Financial," Soelistyo said in a statement released Monday. Gojek co-CEO Andre Soelistyo will lead the new company, while Tokopedia's President Patrick Cao will retain his title in the combined entity. The merger comes a month after Gojek's largest rival, Singapore-based Grab Holdings, said it would list in the United States via a merger with a special public acquisition company (SPAC) that valued the company at $40 billion. GoTo is backed by investors including Alibaba Group, BackRock, Tencent and Temasek Holdings. The new company will provide services from ride-hailing and financial services to e-commerce. They include Alibaba, Tencent, Sequoia Capital India and Singapore state investor Temasek.The companies said the deal was Indonesia's biggest ever, based on historical fundraising rounds for Gojek, priced in 2019 and Tokopedia, priced in early-2020, that put the combined past valuations of both companies at $18 billion.
The GoTo Group has prominent backers who previously invested in Gojek or Tokopedia. It is a common earnings metric used by tech companies even though some investors are skeptical about it. But there are products that are generating "contribution margin as we call it, or EBITDA on a per product basis."ĮBITDA - a measure of overall financial health for a business - stands for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. GoTo Group will account for more than 2% of GDP in Indonesia."Īsked about the group's path to profitability, Soelistyo told CNBC that parts of the business still require investments for growth and user acquisitions. "We have Gojek's high volume, high frequency mobility transactions, combined with Tokopedia's high value, medium frequency e-commerce transactions. "Our business model is now even more diverse, stable and sustainable," Cao, president of the GoTo Group, said in a statement on Monday. The companies together have more than 100 million monthly active users.
In 2020, their combined transactions were more than 1.8 billion and their total gross transaction value was over $22 billion. GoTo Group will combine e-commerce, on-demand and financial services from Gojek and Tokopedia. A lot of the "ecosystem creation that we are doing in Indonesia would be presented in international markets, so, it's a question (of) when, not an if," he said. To do so, they will create new technologies that can be exported to other markets.
Soelistyo told CNBC the immediate goal for GoTo Group is to improve product experience for customers, drivers and merchants in Indonesia. Last month, Grab announced a nearly $40 billion SPAC merger to go public on the Nasdaq. Sea has a market value of more than $112 billion. The merger will likely help Gojek and Tokopedia to take on larger, regional rivals such as Singapore-headquartered Grab and internet company Sea, which operates e-commerce platform Shopee and has a digital payments and financial services business.