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Nir Eyal, Crystal Widjaja, and Ajey Gore walk into the bar… along with a whole bunch of awesome product leaders who will be speaking at Tech in Asia’s Product Development Conference, a virtual event that will dive into building breakthrough products that positively impact people’s lives. We recently added more speakers including Valerie Wagoner (chief growth officer, GoPay), Norman Sasono (chief technology officer, Dana), and Thanisha (director of product, Pomelo Fashion). See more details and get your tickets at 50% off here. If you’re a Core or Live subscriber, you can sign up at no additional cost.
Today we look at:
- Why Grab and Gojek are going for LinkAja
- How big Sea Group really is
- Other newsy highlights such as Tencent gets scrutinized by Chinese regulators and Ant Group’s CEO steps down
PREMIUM SUMMARY
Is LinkAja the edge that Grab and Gojek need to beat ShopeePay?
Here’s something you don’t see every day: Archrivals becoming shareholders in the same startup. Yep, we’re talking about Grab and Gojek’s investments into Indonesian digital wallet LinkAja. So why is it an important move? .
- Not an ordinary e-wallet: LinkAja is a big deal in Indonesia. Not only is the e-wallet dominant in second- and third-tier cities, but it’s also backed by 10 state-owned enterprises including Pertamina, the state-owned oil and gas company, and PT Jasa Marga, which manages the country’s toll roads.
- Grab and Gojek go for the win?: While the super apps have their own digital wallets, they haven’t been able to fully tackle things such as public transportation, gas, or municipal bills since they are controlled by the state. LinkAja could potentially open these doors for Grab and Gojek.
- ShopeePay shivers in fear?: Well, not exactly. It’s still highly possible for ShopeePay to team up with LinkAja since a relative of President Joko Widodo’s right-hand man is the current commissioner of Shopee’s parent company, Sea Group.
Read more: How LinkAja can help Grab and Gojek fend off ShopeePay
STARTUP SNAPSHOT
Sea Group is huge, but how big is it exactly?
We all know this: Sea Group, the parent company of Shopee and Garena, is the homegrown star of Singapore’s tech ecosystem. It has a market valuation of over US$120 billion – more than double compared to all of Southeast Asia’s other unicorns combined, as shown in our chart. But what does that really mean?
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