IT has been just five months since Gojek started operations in Singapore. We are excited to have launched our ride-hailing service here – just a year ago, even before we unveiled plans to foray into Singapore, it was clear that users were vexed by the lack of ride-hailing options and keenly awaiting a credible alternative in ride-hailing.
I’m proud to say that our entry has brought choice back for both riders and drivers alike, and positively disrupted the ride-hailing market in Singapore. Demand for rides on our platform has doubled since we started operations in November 2018 – and response from the driver community has been equally overwhelming, with tens of thousands of drivers having signed up and many new drivers coming on board our platform every day to make a living.
But this is only the start. Singapore is a marathon that we’ve just begun, a market to which we are committed for the long term.
A question I’ve been asked a lot lately is on Gojek’s strategy to be a Super App: Why have we not grown beyond ride-hailing and launched new services in Singapore? Of course, we think about how to expand and improve the lives of Singapore users, constantly; but first we want to deliver a good ride-hailing product.
As we grow the business in Singapore, we remain rooted to Gojek’s founding story of social purpose. We were founded on the simple promise to improve the lives of ojek drivers (motorcycle taxi-drivers) and social mobility in Indonesia, reflecting a desire to create social impact from the get-go. In Indonesia, Gojek is a now Super App which has partnered more than 1 million drivers and more than 300,000 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) including food merchants and service providers, while facilitating more than 100 million transactions per month. Our impact is that we enable the long tail of merchants such as small roadside food stalls to go online and access a much larger market.
