The fare prices of two Southeast Asian ride-hailing giants Gojek and Grab have been included in the calculation of inflation considerations by the Indonesian local government. This was confirmed by Suhariyanto, director of the Indonesian Statistics Agency, in an interview with local media on Monday.
“Newly included consumer price index (CPI) There are 98 kinds of products calculated, including mobile phone accessories, including Grab and Gojek fares “Suhariyanto said,” These consumption growth is very fast, they have actually become an important part of people’s economic activities. “
In addition to the above consumption behaviors, there are 8 new cities included in the CPI statistics. In this way, Indonesia’s CPI statistics for 2020 will include consumption data for 34 provincial capital cities and 56 districts across the country (city) .
After using the new formula, the Indonesian government announced that the CPI index for January 2020 was 2.68%. The new formula uses 2018 as the base year for CPI calculations, not 2012.
However, the CPI value in January is not as good as last December. Previously, the December CPI calculated based on the old formula was 2.72%.
“Nevertheless, we believe that such differences will not have a significant impact on the value of this year’s inflation rate,” said the director of the statistical office.
No matter how the Bureau of Statistics calculates, Grab and Gojek’s leading position in the Southeast Asian ride-hailing market will not be affected in the slightest. In recent years, these two companies have been growing and expanding, and they have not yet seen any of them showing signs of falling behind.
Acquisition of Bento, Grab also needs financial services
Grab also made an important move the day after the Indonesian government announced that online ride-hailing consumption was included in the CPI index. They announced that the company had acquired Singapore-based robotics consulting startup Bento Invest for an inconvenient amount. Bento’s services include client acquisitions, investment portfoliosConstruction and asset rebalancing. So Grab’s goal in this acquisition is to add wealth management products to its own applications.
Grab has a long-standing plan to become a wealth management service, but related services have been progressing slowly as it has not yet obtained a digital banking license in Singapore. Bento Invest happened to have the (CMS) license issued by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, which added Grab’s next step. Reliable boost.
The company also stated in the statement that after the completion of the acquisition, Bento Invest will be renamed GrabInvest, and its leader will still be Bento’s CEO and founder, Chandrima Das, former general manager of Bank of Singapore. Das will integrate Bento’s existing products with Grab’s applications within the first half of this year.
At the same time, Grab will also actively apply for Singapore’s digital banking license, but they will face great competitive pressure. Only five companies have been able to obtain licenses, but according to the Monetary Authority of Singapore last month, they have received 21 digital banking license applications. Grab’s opponents include not only Singtel, the Singapore telecom giant, InstaRem, a Singapore money transfer company, but also Ant Financial. It is worth mentioning that Alibaba, the parent company of Ant Financial, also invested in Grab in April 2018, helping its market value rise to $ 6 billion.
But compared to Ali, Didi’s relationship with Grab is really “close”. Didi is the company’s third largest shareholder except Uber and SoftBank; in 2017, Didi also invested $ 2.5 billion in Grab with SoftBank, making its valuation soar to $ 5 billion. Today, Grab’s market value has already exceeded 14 billion U.S. dollars, Didi’s investment in that year is also worth it.
Joined Bluebird, but Gojek only has Grab
Similar to Grab, Indonesian unicorn Gojek also has a strong Chinese background. Tencent and JD.com have participated in Gojek many times. The most recent was in February last year, when they worked with Google to invest $ 920 million in Gojke’s Series F funding.
Gojek also has a layout for Grab’s favorite financial services. Last September, Go-Ventures, Gojek’s venture capital arm, led a $ 3 million first round of financing for fintech startup Pluang. The reason why Gojek does this is mainly because of the gold trading on the Pluang platform.
However, financial services are not currently the most interesting thing for Gojek. Their focus is still on the ride-hailing market.
It was reported at the end of last year that the company was about to purchase one of Indonesia’s largest taxi companies, Blue Bird (Blue Bird) 5 % Of shares. According to Bloomberg, Gojek will pay $ 30 million. This means Bluebird’s valuation is around $ 600 million. Although this number is insignificant compared to Gojek, which has a market value of $ 10 billion, this transaction is significant for the latter.
Bluebird was born in 1972 as the first taxi company in Indonesia. They are also innovators in the Indonesian transportation industry. When Uber gained fame in the United States in 2011, Bluebird also smelled the business opportunity. They launched a reservation application based on the BlackBerry mobile phone system, thereby occupying a leading position in the mobile car-hailing market. In recent years, although this established company has been losing ground in the competition with emerging talents such as Grab and Gojek, the market reputation accumulated over the years of operation is incomparable to Gojek. So a stake in Bluebird will not only give Gojek’s teamExpansion, and more importantly, a large number of loyal users harvesting Bluebird.
From the perspective of the external environment, currently in Indonesia, the relevant regulations for ride-hailing are still in the process of continuous adjustment and improvement, and the investment in established taxi companies means that Gojek has also given it a traditional industry. Background, which has suddenly increased the legitimacy of its business, and thus has a stronger ability to deal with regulatory risks.
In addition, after buying Bluebird shares, Gojek now has fair access to competitors’ data. Bluebird’s own app stores a lot of data about users who prefer to take a taxi rather than an online taxi service, which is very helpful for Gojek to study consumer psychology and improve product services. Not only that, Bluebird has been trying to optimize service levels through the Internet of Things: by monitoring car engines, vehicle locations and driver performance to find strategies to improve operational efficiency and reduce costs. These technologies can also help Gojek improve the operating efficiency of its own online car rental and win the long-running tug-of-war with Grab.