GOJEK Acquires AirCTO, A Bangalore-based Artificial Intelligence Recruitment Platform

GOJEK, the Super App of Southeast Asia, acquired AirCTO, a Bangalore-based Artificial Intelligence recruitment platform, and opened its second engineering and product development centre in Gurgaon.

As part of the deal, the AirCTO team will be joining GOJEK with immediate effect and will be looking into building products that accelerate the recruitment of talent for GOJEK. The acquisition aligns with GOJEK’s focus on hiring premium talent to support the development of its ‘Super App’. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The company has also announced the opening of a new office in Gurgaon, for which GOJEK plans to hire 100 employees aiming to reach a total headcount of 500 in India by the year-end. As part of its expansion plans, the company is also considering further acquisitions in India.

The Indonesian-headquartered company is actively interested in companies with complementary expertise in engineering, design and product management.

Sidu Ponnappa, MD India at GOJEK, said in a statement, "Our investment in Gurgaon underlines our commitment to growing the GOJEK India story. We have looked at multiple ways to expand our operations and concluded that Gurgaon is a logical destination to set up shop, not least because of the amazing talent we have found in the area. GOJEK recorded an annualized Gross Transaction Value (GTV) of US$9 billion as of 2018, and the hyper-growth journey we’ve been on demands talent who are willing to take risks, fail, learn and continue to scale a company that aims to solve everyday problems for Southeast Asia. With operations underway in Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, we will now consider whether further acquisitions are needed as we seek to bring in entrepreneurial teams who can help us further develop the multi-service business model that makes GOJEK a leader in Southeast Asia."

On the acquisition of AirCTO, Sidu added, “I’m super thrilled to have AirCTO’s talented team join us. The team will use technology to help us scale up our hiring processes. Finding quality talent is always a challenge, and Atif and team are here to find technology-based solutions that will help us to overcome this challenge.”

Atif Haider, Founder, AirCTO, said, “At AirCTO we’ve focused on the pain points technology firms experience as they seek to find talent that fits their requirements. We believe that recruiting as an industry needs a major upheaval, and we started AirCTO with this in mind. Over the past three years, we’ve helped a range of startups and corporates source qualified candidates for critical technology roles. We were in talks with a number of other tech giants, but we found GOJEK to be the best fit, as we share similar DNA - something that’s really important for us. We intend to use our prowess in recruitment to contribute to the hyper-growth GOJEK is currently experiencing across Southeast Asia.”

Located at DLF CyberHub, Gurgaon, the 18,000+ sq.ft office is equipped to seat around 150+ employees. The centre offers all amenities including a 24/7 office with a cafeteria. The interiors reflect GOJEK’s signature combination of green and white with a touch of wood. The office will be a combination of open spaces, breakout areas for discussions, meeting rooms and coder caves.

The GOJEK Bangalore office recently won an Institute of Indian Interior Designers (IIID) award for the ‘Best Design’ category.

As part of the expansion, GOJEK’s largest India-based product team, GO-FOOD, will setup product divisions in the Gurgaon office. GOJEK is the largest single-market food delivery app in the world outside of China. It is the largest food delivery app in Southeast Asia with over 400,000 merchants - 85% of these are small micro-entrepreneurs that rely heavily on GO-FOOD for revenue.

Working at GOJEK gives an opportunity to solve real challenges and transform lives across Southeast Asia. Earlier this year, Melinda Gates, Co-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, called out GOJEK’s use of technology as a case study on how digital tools can help increase growth and inclusion. The company’s vision has fuelled the culture of ‘Social Impact’ and its deep narratives that can help the lives of millions.

GOJEK currently runs one of the largest JRuby, Clojure, Java and Go clusters in Asia. Its robust tech-infrastructure is built and managed by just 350+ engineers positively impacting millions in Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

At the beginning of the year, GOJEK announced the first closing of its ongoing Series F funding round led by Google, JD.com, and Tencent, along with Mitsubishi Corporation and Provident Capital. For more information click here.

GOJEK is a Super App. It’s one app for ordering food, commuting, digital payments, shopping, hyper-local delivery, getting a massage and two dozen services. It is Indonesia’s first and fastest growing unicorn building an on-demand empire.

GOJEK processed more than US$9 billion annualized gross transaction value (GTV) across all markets where it operates in 2018, making it the largest consumer transactional technology group on a GTV-basis across South East Asia.

The GOJEK app was first launched in January 2015 for consumers in Indonesia and has since evolved into the largest on-demand multi-service platform in Southeast Asia, providing access to a wide range of services from transportation and payments to food delivery, logistics and many other on-demand services. GOJEK now operates in 204 cities and regencies in five Southeast Asian countries.

Indonesian Unicorn Startup Go-Jek To Enter India To Launch Bike Taxi Service

Indonesian unicorn startup Go-Jek, which offers hyperlocal transport, logistics and payment services, is planning to launch its bike-taxi service in India in the second half of 2018, reported Economic Times, citing people aware of the development said.

To launch its bike taxi services, Go-Jek is is evaluating some southern cities, possibly Bengaluru, and the Gurugram-NCR region and it may launch a pilot in one of these cities at the end of this year.

The report further said that a big chunk of the Go-Jek's most recent fundraise, which is pegged at approximately $1.2 billion, will be allocated towards expansion plans into developing markets like India.

The funraising the report is referring to is a follow-on round from 2017. Just yesterday, Indonesian conglomerate Astra International announced that it will invest $150 million in Go-Jek, joining the likes of Google and Temasek Holdings in the ride-hailing start-up's latest round of fundraising pegged at approximately US $1.2 billion.

With Ola and Uber’s core focus not being on bike taxis, Go-Jek has the scope to enter and dominate the market over time. The company is evaluating an India entry later this year, said the Economic Times report.

According to the sources quoted in the report, Go-Jek has less to no scope for its bike-taxi service in developed countries but sees India as a huge opportunity. The company is likely to explore state government partnerships with select cities that do not have strict regulations where bike taxis are concerned.

It should be noted that although Go-Jek has yet to start its services in India, the company officially launched its India operations in November 2016 when it opened its engineering facility in Bengaluru that also serves as its headquarters in the India. Situated in the heart of Bengaluru city, this facility also become the training centre for hundreds of GO-JEK engineers both from Indonesia and India.

Notably, Go-Jek has also acquired four startups from India including Bangalore-based Pianta, a home healthcare services startup, in September 2016 followed by acquisition of Leftshift, a Pune based mobile application developer that specialized in designing and engineering mobile applications for popular start-ups such as BookMyShow and Walnut.

Founded in 2011 by Harvard graduate Nadiem Makarim, GO-JEK is currently the fastest growing start-up in South Asia and the largest in Indonesia in terms of valuation.

Indonesian Unicorn GO-JEK Opens New Engineering Facility in Bengaluru

GO-JEK, one of Southeast Asia’s leading start-ups from Indonesia, has announced the opening of its engineering facility in India that will also serve as its headquarters in the country. Situated in the heart of Bengaluru city, this facility will also become the training centre for hundreds of GO-JEK engineers both from Indonesia and India, to support GO-JEK in building on its initial success as the largest on-demand application of choice for all Indonesians.

Speaking on the occasion of the office opening, Nadiem Makarim, Founder and CEO, GO-JEK said, “We are pleased to announce the opening of this new engineering facility in Bengaluru as it will continue to drive our culture of collaboration and passion for innovation as we look to grow from strength to strength in every vertical that we operate in Indonesia. This will help us to continue and improve the daily lives of more than 250,000 motorcycle and car driver partners, more than 35,000 GO-FOOD merchants whose businesses we helped grow and more than 3,000 service providers on our other on-demand services.”

Based on the recent announcement from Indonesia’s Central Bureau of Statistics, online bike-taxi service has helped lower down the number of unemployment in many cities in Indonesia. As the only start-up offering online bike-taxi service in 15 cities in Indonesia, it is undeniable that GO-JEK has contributed on creating new jobs for Indonesian. Beside the bike-taxi service, the start-up has diversified into food delivery service, courier and logistic service, grocery delivery service, cleaning service, massage service, beauty and lifestyle service, automotive service, and pharmaceutical delivery service on its platform.

As engineering facility, the India headquarters will also serve as a training center for GO-JEK engineers both from Indonesia and India. “We have been seeing how collaboration and knowledge-sharing between our engineers in Indonesia and India has helped accelerating our product innovation, mining data and crafting consumer experiences for GO-JEK. We are excited to see how our engineers will continue to help GO-JEK to create larger impacts for people,” said Nadiem.

GO-JEK recently made its fourth Indian acquisition when it bought Leftshift, a Pune-based mobile app developer that specialized in designing and engineering mobile applications for popular start-ups such as BookMyShow and Walnut.

Founded in 2010, GO-JEK is currently the fastest growing start-up in Southeast Asia and the largest in Indonesia in terms of valuation, funding raised and number of transactions. In August 2016, GO-JEK had raised over $550 million in a new round of funding led by KKR and Warburg Pincus LLC, the largest ever for an Indonesian technology start-up.

With over 25 million app downloads, GO-JEK's platform powers the Indonesian equivalents of Ola, Paytm, Swiggy, Grofers, Zomato, Dunzo and UrbanClap at a comparable scale. Its GO-FOOD business alone does more daily orders than all Indian food tech start-ups combined.

The office inauguration ceremony was presided over by Nadiem Makarim, Founder and CEO, GO-JEK and attended by business partners, GO-JEK senior management and employees.

GO-JEK Buys Pune-Based Mobile App Developer Leftshift

GO-JEK, Indonesia’s largest start-up has acquired Leftshift, a Pune-based mobile application developer that specialized in designing and engineering mobile applications for popular start-ups such as BookMyShow and Walnut. The acquisition is aimed at strengthening and upscaling GO-JEK's product development, design and engineering platforms to support the unicorn’s burgeoning Indonesia operations.

This is the fourth Indian start-up acquisition by the Indonesian unicorn and the second this year – in August, it had acquired Bangalore-based Pianta, a start-up that specialized in on-demand home healthcare services.

Following the acquisition, Leftshift will completely assimilate into GO-JEK’s India arm, GO-JEK Engineering India, with its operations and 42 staff members also relocating from Pune to GO-JEK’s India headquarters in Bangalore. GO-JEK Engineering India focuses on product innovation, mining data and crafting consumer experiences for its parent company GO-JEK. With this acquisition, the India headcount of the company will swell from 60 to well over 100.

"Our partnership with Leftshift over the last one year has been an amazing experience - they are arguably among the best mobile app developers in the country. We look forward to their immensely capable team becoming a part of the GO-JEK family", said Sidu Ponnappa, Managing Director, GO-JEK Engineering India.

Leftshift Technologies Pvt Ltd was started in 2007 by Sudhanshu Raheja and Abhinit Tiwari with the intent of creating “loveable apps” that people would find easy and convenient to use. Since its inception, the bootstrapped start-up had quickly gone on to become a mobile development powerhouse - designing and engineering over 200 user-friendly apps for a number of well-known start-ups and large companies such as Craftsvilla, Practo, Byju's, NH7, CitrusPay, PepperTap, Airtel and Emerson. In the last couple of years alone, these apps collectively have been downloaded more than 42 million times and several of them have been featured on the App Store.

Prior to the acquisition, Leftshift was engaged with GO-JEK on a regular basis to support the latter in the development of its mobile app. Apart from GO-JEK, the firm also has a track record of building apps for other well-known and fast growing Indonesian start-ups like Tokopedia and Veritrans.

Sudhanshu Raheja, founder and CEO, Leftshift said, "The opportunities and challenges at GO-JEK are beyond thrilling. Being fully aware of its operations, we immediately knew that our resources and technology would certainly complement and accelerate product development at GO-JEK. Moreover, the fact that our work would help millions of GO-JEK mobile app users in Indonesia is something we are very excited about as well."

Founded in 2011 by Harvard graduate Nadiem Makarim, GO-JEK is currently the fastest growing start-up in South Asia and the largest in Indonesia in terms of valuation, funding raised and number of transactions. Having started as a bike-taxi business, the start-up has diversified into food delivery, one-hour courier delivery, grocery delivery and even has aggregated trucks on its platform. It has partnered with 200,000 motorcycle drivers and 5,000 trucks across Indonesia, all of whom, collectively cover an average distance of 4.5 million kilometres daily.

In August 2016, GO-JEK had raised over $550 million in a new round of funding led by KKR and Warburg Pincus LLC, the largest ever for an Indonesian technology start-up. Following the deal, the start-up was valued at over $1.3 billion. GO-JEK competes against the likes of Uber and Grab, two private car-hailing start-ups in Indonesia’s flourishing ride-hailing industry.

With over 25 million app downloads, GO-JEK's platform powers the Indonesian equivalents of Ola, Paytm, Swiggy, Grofers, Zomato, Dunzo and UrbanClap at a comparable scale. Its GO-FOOD business alone does more daily orders than all Indian food tech start-ups combined.

The company also stated that it intends to continue shoring up its India operations as it eyes more talent for key processes like data science, mobile, security and DevOps.

Image : Nadiem Makarim, Founder & CEO, GO-JEK

Indian Healthcare Startup Pianta Gets Acquired By Indonesian Unicorn Startup GO-JEK

Bangalore-based home healthcare services startup Pianta has been acquired by GO-JEK, an Indonesian unicorn startup, for an undisclosed amount. GO-JEK is backed by Sequoia Capital and Yuri Milner-backed DST Global and deals in hyperlocal transport, logistics and payments services in Indonesia.

The acquisition is expected to bolster the Indonesian startup's entry into the India's healthcare space. "GO-JEK is moving to launch an on-demand healthcare product which might have on demand delivery and logistics issues, which is where Pianta forte is," said Sidu Ponnappa, Managing Director, GO-JEK Engineering India.

The acquisition happened within 4 months of funding that Pianta received from Freecharge Founders – Kunal Shah and Sandeep Tandon.

Pianta was founded in 2015 by former Ola and Flipkart executives Swaminathan Seetharaman, Ganesh Subramanian and Nitin Agarwal. Seetharaman has worked with Ola as vice president of engineering while Subramanian was earlier principal architect at Ola. Agarwal was earlier a director of engineering at Ola.

In August of this year, GO-JEK became the first startup of Indonesian origin to be classified as a Unicorn after raising $550 million from the likes of KKR, Warburg Pincus, Farallon Capital, Capital Group Private Markets.

Prior to this acquisition, Go-Jek has acquired two more Indian startups -- C42 Engineering and CodeIgnition, in February.

In India, GO-JEK doesn't have any services but has an engineering centre in Bengaluru where it employs 60 people.