Gojek and Tokopedia announce merger to become new tech giant in Southeast Asia

Gojek and Tokopedia announce a merger to create Indonesia tech giant

Although the value of the deal is not disclosed, it was announced to be the largest business deal in Indonesia's history. GoTo Group will be led by Gojek’s Andre Soelistyo as group CEO and Tokopedia’s Patrick Cao will be group president. Kevin Aluwi will remain CEO of Gojek and William Tanuwijaya will continue to lead Tokopedia. Soelistyo will also lead the payments and financial services unit, which will be rebranded as GoTo Financial.

As reported by CNBC, the merger will likely help Gojek and Tokopedia to take on larger regional rivals such as Singapore-headquartered Grab and internet company Sea, which operates e-commerce platform Shopee and has a digital payments and financial services business. Sea has a market value of more than $112 billion.

GoTo Group will create a synergy of strenths of both GoJek and Tokopeida including e-commerce, on-demand and financial services. In 2020, both companies have delivered more than 1.8 billion combined transactions with total gross trasaction value of $22 billion. The two boasts more than 100 million monthly active users.

“Our business model is now even more diverse, stable, and sustainable,” said Patrick Cao, president of GoTo Group. “We have Gojek’s high volume, high frequency mobility transactions, combined with Tokopedia’s high value, medium frequency e-commerce transactions. GoTo Group will account for more than 2 per cent of the GDP in Indonesia.”

Andre Soelistyo said that Gojek drivers will deliver more packages from Tokopedia while the two firms will use their combined scale to focus on increasing financial inclusion in the region.

Gojek and Tokopedia have been in negotiations for a possible merger since late December after Gojek’s discussions with rival Grab collapsed. Grab last month agreed to go public in the US through a combination with Altimeter Growth Corp., the largest-ever merger with a blank-check company.