Gojek’s $141m price tag for entering Singapore

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If my trips to Jakarta and Bali have taught me one thing, it’s my love for Gojek’s food delivery and ride-hailing services. But while the tech giant has a clear foothold in Indonesia, it’s a different story in Singapore, where archrival Grab remains the frontrunner. My one attempt to book a Gojek ride in the city-state in 2019 failed, no thanks to the shortage of registered drivers in the obscure neighborhood I live in. Breaking into a new market is easy – said no one ever.

Today we look at,

• Gojek Singapore’s US$141 million spending in its first year of operations
• An ex-Lazada exec’s edtech startup scores funds
• Other newsy highlights such as ByteDance’s hiring spree, and Grab Indonesia’s drive-through vaccination service

PREMIUM SUMMARY

Gojek Singapore’s got a way to go

In 2019, Velox Digital Singapore – the Singapore entity of Indonesian ride-hailing unicorn Gojek – recorded a US$141 million loss in its first full year of operations, with more incentives paid out to drivers than service fees earned.

• The net loss is a small slice of the roughly US$5.4 billion that Gojek has raised from investors. The tech giant first entered Singapore in 2018 as part of its regional expansion and claims to have completed 30 million trips in its first year.
• With the average number of daily trips for private-hire cars at 347,000 in 2018 and 419,000 in 2019, this puts Gojek’s market share in Singapore at approximately 20%. These numbers don’t include taxi rides, though, given the firm only launched taxi bookings in November 2019 in partnership with Singaporean company Trans Cab.
• Regardless, Gojek has its work cut out for it: an ABI Research study reveals the unicorn only held a 4.2% market share in Singapore’s ride-hailing sector in 2019, a figure that dipped in the first half of 2020. Comparably, competitor Grab held an over 90% market share in both periods. Interestingly, though, ABI Research’s data on Gojek’s number of trips – which it says was collected from “numerous ride-hailing operators” without specifying which ones – is only a fraction of the tech unicorn’s official number. It’s unclear why the discrepancy exists.

Read more: Gojek Singapore burned $141m in first full year of operations

STARTUP SPOTLIGHT

Fresh funds for this Singapore edtech firm

Manabie – a Singapore-based edtech firm founded by former Lazada executive vice president Christy Wong and Takuya Homma, who brings with him over 10 years of experience in the education space – has secured a US$3 million investment from Do Ventures, Genesia Ventures, and Chiba Dojo. This brings its total funds raised to US$4.8 million.

Deep Dive: The rising ‘buy now, pay later’ trend