The additional $250 million investment is on the top of $700 million under the ‘Grab 4 Indonesia’ 2020 Master Plan, started in 2017. The investment comes after Grab’s main rival Go-Jek invested $500 million in 2018, to expand its business in the country.
With the exit of Uber, the competition in the Indonesian ride-hailing market is mainly restricted to Grab and Go-Jek. Go-Jek has seen a significant growth in recent years, processing more than 100 million transactions from around 20-25 million users with the inclusion of services such as e-payment and food-delivery.
Grab is following Go-Jek to include related mobile dependant businesses – such as food-delivery and courier services in its platform – to serve as a “super-app” for its users fulfilling any service they can think of – from massages to ride-hailing to home cleaning. Including other services (apart from ride-hailing) will help both the companies to optimise vehicle usage and serve as additional revenue streams in the long term. – Aman Madhok