Google invests in Indonesian ride hailing firm Go-Jek

Go-JekGoogle has made its first investment in the Asian ride hailing market with the funding of Indonesian startup Go-Jek, which already boasts backing from the likes of Tencent, JD.com, Rakuten, and Temasek.

Neither company has specified how much of an investment has been made but, according to Reuters, Google’s investment is believed somewhere in the region of $100m.

“Go-Jek is led by a strong Indonesian management team and has a proven track record of using technology to make life more convenient for Indonesians across the country,” said Caesar Sengupta, VP of Google’s next billion users team, in a blog post. “This investment lets us partner with a great local champion in Indonesia’s flourishing startup ecosystem, while also deepening our commitment to Indonesia’s internet economy.”

The investment has come as rivals Uber and Grab – both backed by SoftBank – expand in Indonesia, which has the fifth largest population of internet users in the world with 133m internet users as June 2017.

Go-Jek started out as a bike-only taxi service but has since expanded to offer a variety of services including food deliveries, cleaners, hairdressers, and more. It was valued at around $3bn back in May 2017 following a $1.2bn funding round led by Tencent.

The Indonesian app isn’t the only ride hailing firm to gain investment from the Alphabet/Google pot.

In October 2017, Google’s parent company Alphabet led $1bn funding round – via its CapitalG growth investment fund – for US firm Lyft.

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