The Milestones of Go-Jek as the First Decacorn Startup in Indonesia

Go-Jek is one of the most successful startups in Indonesia that currently becomes Decacorn and it is the first startup in Indonesia who could achieve this status. Becoming the first Decacorn startup in Indonesia surely is fruitful from a long journey. It was firstly established by the CEO, Nadiem Makarim, in 2010 that delivers ride-hailing of motorcycles through phone service. Cities are moved by them by providing lifestyle services and on-demand transportation. The operation of Go-Jek has widely offered across Southeast Asia in over 50 cities.

At the beginning year of Go-Jek’s establishment, it did not work very well until they could turn the table in 2015 as they start to provide mobile application for Android and iOS. The services they provide at that time was transportation, courier, and shopping for Jabodetabek area. Since then, Go-Jek keeps improving their product and service by adding the number of drivers, services, and cities that they could operate. The new service they launched in April 2015 was Go-Food and finally operates in Bandung and Surabaya. During August until December 2015, Go-Jek operates in several new cities, such as Makassar, Jogja, Medan, Palembang, Semarang, Balikpapan and launched several new services, such as Go-Glam, Go-Massage, Go-Clean, Go-Box, Go-Busway, and Go-Tix. On December 17, 2015, the Ministry of transportation, Ignasius Jonan, prohibit the operation of the entire online transportation services, include Go-Jek and then permitted on the next day to actively operate again.

It becomes the year of Go-Jek in 2016 by achieving several footprints. They perform acquisition with C42 engineering, an Indian startup by having 200,000 drivers. The demonstration by thousand taxi drivers to the online transportation drivers, include Go-Jek, did not stop them to be operated in new cities (Malang, Solo, Samarinda, and Manado) as well launching new services (Go-Car and Go-Auto). Go-Jek gave very good news on August 4, 2016, that they are officially a Unicorn startup in Indonesia with the valuation amounted US $ 550 million. By delivering the three pillars of Go-Jek, namely; speed, innovation, and social impact could send them to achieve the status of “Decacorn SuperApp” in only 10 years operation. CBInsights, an international research institute declared that Go-Jek has reached the valuation for about US $ 10 billion that equals to IDR 140 trillion. Based on CBInsights, there are only 19 decacorn startups all over the world and mostly its Decacorn is from the United States.

*source: https://www.go-jek.com/ about/ & Aditya Hadi Pratama: https://id.techinasia.com/ & Bernhart Farras: https://www.cnbcindonesia.com/fintech/

Rewrite by Shinta Amalina. H. Havidz