Visual: How a decade of work led to the GoTo merger

A little over a decade ago, Indonesia was a completely different scene. Tokopedia had struggled for two years to raise funding while Gojek toiled as a call center, pre-mobile app.

Since then, the two companies have amassed billions of dollars in funding and redefined the daily lives of millions of consumers. In this timeline, Tech in Asia takes a look at their individual paths over the last decade before they finally converged. 

Gojek’s and Tokopedia’s key milestones over the decade / Image credit: Timmy Loen

Gojek’s and Tokopedia’s journeys are marked with timely and wide-ranging product diversification, and we can see how both companies have expanded their businesses across multiple services throughout the years.

Gojek’s and Tokopedia’s product diversification in the past few years / Image credit: Timmy Loen

Grab and Gojek had held merger discussions after years of fierce competition with each other. After about a year, the talks went nowhere. Then in a matter of months, Gojek-Tokopedia became official.

Two potential mergers that gained the spotlight / Image credit: Timmy Loen

Without Grab’s SPAC merger, the Gojek and Tokopedia union would have overshadowed the former’s valuation and become the region’s highest-valued internet company. Gojek and Tokopedia have amassed an illustrious list of investors over the years, including SoftBank, Google, and rivals Alibaba and Tencent. 

The interactive timeline below tracks Gojek and Tokopedia’s journey through the years – from pioneers in the early days of Indonesia’s tech scene, to unicorn statuses, and finally, to the groundbreaking merger.