Indonesia’s Gojek, Tokopedia combine to form largest tech group GoTo

Gojek, Southeast Asia’s leading mobile on-demand services and payments platform, has officially merged with Tokopedia, operator of Indonesia’s leading marketplace, to create the largest technology group they called GoTo.

The agreement marks the largest ever business combination in the country and the largest between two Asia-based internet media and services companies to date, according to the announcement.

GoTo combines e-commerce, on-demand, and financial services, creating the first platform in Southeast Asia to host these three essential use cases in one ecosystem.

The GoTo Group has total group gross transaction value of over $22 billion in 2020; over 1.8 billion transactions in 2020; total registered driver fleet of over 2 million as of December 2020; over 11 million merchant partners as of December 2020; over 100 million monthly active users; and an ecosystem that encompasses 2% of Indonesia’s economy.

According to information provided to the public, Gojek’s Andre Soelistyo will lead the combined business as GoTo Group CEO, with Tokopedia’s Patrick Cao serving as GoTo Group President.

Kevin Aluwi will continue as CEO of Gojek and William Tanuwijaya will remain CEO of Tokopedia. In addition to his group responsibility, Soelistyo will continue to lead payments and financial services, under the new brand of GoTo Financial, which encompasses GoPay as well as the Group’s merchant and financial services offerings.

“Our business model is now even more diverse, stable, and sustainable. We have Gojek’s high-volume, high-frequency mobility transactions, combined with Tokopedia’s high-value, medium frequency e-commerce transactions,” said Cao.

For his part, Soelistyo said “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”.

“Gojek drivers will deliver even more Tokopedia packages, merchant partners of all sizes will benefit from strengthened business solutions and we will use our combined scale to increase financial inclusion in an emerging region with untapped growth potential,” Soelistyo stressed.

The GoTo Group has a roster of supportive blue-chip investors including Alibaba Group, Astra International, BlackRock, Capital Group, DST, Facebook, Google, JD.com, KKR, Northstar, Pacific Century Group, PayPal, Provident, Sequoia Capital India, SoftBank Vision Fund 1, Telkomsel, Temasek, Tencent, Visa, and Warburg Pincus.