This article comes fromWeChat public account: Momentum Ventures (ID: MomentumWorks), the original title: “Financing 150 million and processing $12 billion in transactions, will Gojek make a profit? “Author: Yusuf, title figure from the visual China
After a series of black swans tossing in 2020, Grab reportedly was discussing a US$3 billion financing with Ali, and announced the lead investment in the national wallet LinkAja, and looked confident in Singapore’s digital bank license competition. Full, seems to have a steady footwork.
This makes Gojek, Grab’s Indonesian rival, uncontrollable. At a time when there are widespread rumors that the two are discussing a merger, Gojek said last week that he is on the way to profitability. The company claims that COVID-19 has greatly promoted the development of Gojek’s digital services, and gave a string of eye-catching numbers: monthly active users reached 38 million, and the total transaction volume increased by 10% compared with last year, reaching $12 billion. Compared with last year, its cooperative food delivery merchants increased by 80% to 900,000, and the total annual transaction volume of food delivery services increased by 500%.
The figure of US$12 billion is so high. If you count a single order of five dollars higher according to the takeaway, that would be 2.4 billion orders processed in a year. Do you believe?
This is actually not the first time that Gojek has had such a “dazzling” performance increase. As early as 2018, they redefines the total transaction volume(GTV) , double counting the takeaway, taxi and payment, and claimed that GTV has increased nearly 4 times year-on-year. In other words, someone ordered a $5 takeaway, which was calculated as a $5 takeaway transaction and a $5 payment transaction on GTV-a total of $10.
The 12 billion this time is almost certainly calculated in the same way.
On the eve of the merger, each increase in chips
Moton’s 2020 forecast said that the major players of Indonesian wallets will be integrated-everyone can’t burn it, and there is no need to burn it anymore.
Since the beginning of this year, some players in the Indonesian market have made obvious moves, all of which are enhancing their competitive advantage and increasing their bargaining chips. Whether it is the combination of OVO and Dana, or the merger of Grab and Gojek, it seems to be advancing step by step.
Grab received several financings at the beginning of the year and successfully survived the impact of the epidemic. In the third quarter, it announced that its income had returned to more than 95% of the level before the outbreak. Last week, Grab even invested in LinkAja, a national electronic wallet in Indonesia, for the integration of the Indonesian payment industry. (some people say it has become a mess) lay the groundwork.
Momentum also predicted the integration of e-commerce. The leading C2C player Tokopedia also increased its shareholding in OVO through its founders(Of course, Tokopedia also has Platform GMV calculation method similar to Gojek). Since Gojek took money from Google and Tencent in June, it hasn’t done much. It is also rumored that a large part of Google’s investment is to let Gojek use Google services.
Faced with the pressing of competitors, after announcing its “proud” performance, it announced that it had successfully received US$150 million from Indonesian telecom giant Telkomsel. It is said that this investment has been discussed for two years-Telkomsel has been unhurried, some people say that it is because Gojek investment does not understand it, and some people say that this is the style of the Indonesian state-owned enterprise and will not start without research for a few years.
It needs to be mentioned that Telkomsel is also one of the shareholders of LinkAja. In fact, LinkAja is mainly based on Telkomsel’s previous wallet Tcash.Is it possible that Telkomsel watched Gojek have no money to invest in LinkAja and then borrowed the money to cross the road?
However, at the beginning of this year, the leader of Telkomsel’s parent company, Telkom, was scolded by the director of the SASAC, Eric Thorir, for various reasons such as slow actions and messy business outside of Telkomsel.
In addition to strengthening their bargaining chips in the Indonesian market, Gojek has not forgotten to gain a sense of presence in Thailand. Recently, their advertisements have begun to spread across various offline channels in Thailand.
In the “Top Ten Forecasts for Southeast Asia in 2019” released by Mo Teng at the end of 2018, it was mentioned that Gojek’s overseas expansion will not be smooth. Two years later, Gojek, who entered the Vietnamese market with Go-Viet in the early days, not only encountered Grab’s chase, but also after a series of setbacks, this year he encountered a Korean boy under Delivery Hero who was willing to burn money. In Thailand, the company faces not only Grab, a powerful opponent, but also Lineman, Foodpanda, the comeback Shopee Foody, and the Thai banks with the dream of Meituan.
Even if Gojek has the support of China Merchants Bank and Bangkok Bank in Thailand, the competition in the field of mobile payment in Thailand is fierce, and it does not have much advantage. Therefore, a large number of advertisements and downloads have surged recently. The most reasonable explanation is to merge Negotiations increase the bargaining chip. You know, many Grab shareholders believe that Gojek’s business outside of Indonesia has zero value.
Combined vertical and horizontal
Indonesia is the largest market in Southeast Asia. In the past few years, the Internet venture capital field has been in full swing.Apart from Singapore, South Asia has the most unicorn companies. Compared with the introverted Thailand and the Philippines, which has never seen a take-off, Indonesia’s Internet head effect has been showing for many years. Although new players continue to emerge, the basic pattern in e-commerce, payment and other fields has taken shape. What will happen next with a high probability is a strong alliance and start to seize the sinking market.
Many investors have been in these unicorns for many years, waiting to exit.
Gojek has always wanted to gain a foothold in overseas markets other than Indonesia, so as to compete with Grab. However, as far as it is concerned, whether it is Grab’s market share in Southeast Asian countries, ecological construction or international investor recognition, It has more advantages than Gojek.
At the same time, both parties need to be careful about the “Oriental”. In addition to gradually gaining an advantage in the e-commerce field, Shopee also began to plan to enter the food delivery field, and at the same time stepped up efforts to promote its own electronic wallet Shopee Pay, which means that the merger of Grab and Gojek has accelerated.
This article comes fromWeChat public account: Momentum Ventures (ID: MomentumWorks) author: Yusuf