Podcast Summary
Gojek's Fight Against Mafia Violence: The Importance of Proactive Measures: In challenging environments, it's important for businesses to take proactive measures to ensure safety and success. Gojek's decision to hire private security companies to protect their drivers is a testament to the importance of such measures.
In the early days of Gojek, their motorcycle taxi services faced resistance from the mafia who controlled certain areas through violence. These individuals physically assaulted Gojek drivers, which could have been dismissed as the drivers being third parties. However, Gojek took the initiative to hire private security companies to protect their drivers and help them in sticky situations. This decision led to the creation of a successful private security operation that lasted for a long time. This is a testament to the importance of taking necessary, proactive measures to ensure the safety and success of one's business, even in challenging environments.
Gojek: From Motorcycle Taxi to Super App: Gojek started as a motorcycle taxi service and now offers services like ride-hailing, food delivery, payments, and financial services. It has 2.7 million drivers and completed 3 billion orders in 2020, making it one of the largest companies in Southeast Asia.
Gojek is a super app that started as a motorcycle taxi service in Indonesia and has evolved into a general on-demand consumer super app with services ranging from ride-hailing to food delivery, payments, financial services, and more. Gojek currently has about 2.7 million drivers across Southeast Asia and completed 3 billion orders in 2020, making it one of the largest companies in the region. Its scale is comparable to that of Uber globally and larger than Lyft in terms of the number of drivers. At its peak, Gojek had nearly 30 different services all in one app.
Are Super Apps the Future of Business?: Super apps may not always deliver on their promised benefits of lower acquisition costs and increased retention. A clear and unifying concept is necessary for users to understand the product sensibly and prevent confusion when adding new services.
Super apps have been gaining popularity as a strategy among companies like Uber and Twitter, but the benefits of this approach may not pan out in reality. Lower customer acquisition costs, higher attach rates, and higher retention may sound great, but they don't always materialize. A key challenge is that there needs to be a unifying concept across all services within the app for users to think about the product sensibly. For example, customers of a ride-hailing app can easily cross-sell to food or grocery delivery because they understand the unifying factor being the driver. However, adding services that don't fit the unifying concept, such as massage services, can lead to confusion among customers.
The Importance of Building a Strong Brand for Consumer Businesses: Building a strong brand goes beyond just creating a great product as it creates a sense of identity and loyalty among customers. Businesses should invest in brand building across multiple areas for long-term success.
Building a strong brand is crucial for consumer businesses, second only to creating a great product. A great brand creates associations in the minds of customers that go beyond just a transactional relationship, and can become a part of one's identity. This level of loyalty cannot be easily swayed by discounts or other competing features. While brand building may seem like a squishy and hard to define concept, it's an area where there is a missed opportunity for consumer tech businesses. To build a strong brand, businesses should invest in it across multiple areas, as demonstrated by successful companies outside of the tech bubble.
The Importance of Consistency in Branding: Consistency in branding helps customers develop a positive perception of your business. It involves more than just a cool logo, and every touchpoint with customers should have a stable representation of your brand. To be relatable, your brand should be part of the culture.
Consistency in branding is crucial in creating a positive impression among customers. It is more than just having a cool logo and advertising. It is about how customers perceive your product and business. Thus, every touchpoint with customers should have a consistent representation of the brand, from copywriting and advertising to product design. It is essential to create a brand that is relatable and part of the culture. For instance, Go-Jek's delivery service leaned into Indonesia's culture of sending food as gifts, creating a whole cultural phenomenon of sending go-food for dating interests. Additionally, having drivers wear branded jackets and helmets helps with brand recall and associating the brand with a positive experience.
Strengthening Brand Connection with Physical Reminders and Creative Solutions: Companies can reinforce their value proposition and combat competition by using physical reminders such as logos on helmets and jackets. Creative solutions like building a mini ATM network can also help startups establish themselves in the market.
To make a stronger brand connection, companies should look for opportunities to reinforce their value proposition beyond just visual recall. Putting logos and colors on helmets and jackets, like Gojek did, can act as a physical reminder of the service and how it can help customers. Unfortunately, these opportunities are rare and lazier branding options, like billboards and digital campaigns, tend to be more popular. As a scrappy startup, Gojek had to find creative solutions, like physical cash booths and building a mini ATM network to pay out drivers. They also had to combat fake driver apps by adding features, like accepting orders, that were not allowed on the platform.
Gojek's strategy to combat fraud and prioritize safety: Gojek faced a talent scarcity and chose to copy fraudulent apps to reduce their user base while prioritizing safety by hiring private security for drivers.
Due to a scarcity of engineering and security talent, Southeast Asia's ride-hailing platform Gojek decided to copy the top features of fraudulent third-party apps to reduce their number of users rather than investing time and resources in technical security aspects. This decision was made out of necessity, and it significantly reduced the number of users on these third-party apps. Gojek also chose to do hard things that create value for their customers because doing so makes it harder for competitors to win over their customers. One example was hiring private security to protect their drivers from physical altercations with motorcycle taxi mafia.
Gojek's Commitment to Driver Safety Through Private Security Operations: Gojek's intensive private security operations in specific hotspots showed their commitment to their driver community. This commitment led to loyalty despite competitors offering higher pay. Founder Kevin Aluwi held multiple roles to fully understand the business.
Gojek, a ride-hailing platform, used to have its own private security operation to keep its drivers safe, showing its commitment and care towards its driver community. The security operation was intensive, and the company had patrols in specific hotspots such that if there was a situation brewing, the security personnel would instantly or almost instantly show up to help diffuse it. Although competitors started coming in and paying more money, Gojek still had a lot of loyalty within the driver community because of its commitment to their safety. As a founder, Kevin Aluwi held multiple roles in the company to understand every part of the business and find somebody who could do it orders of magnitude better than himself.
From Go-Jek Driver to Co-Founder: Kevin Aluwi's Journey in Building a Technology Empire: Kevin Aluwi, co-founder of Go-Jek, started as a driver for the app and saw the need for compensation for extra work. This led to the introduction of waiting fees and multiple stops, paving the way for the company's success in Southeast Asia's emerging tech industry.
Kevin Aluwi, co-founder of Go-Jek, the ride-hailing and delivery giant in Southeast Asia, recounts his journey from being an early driver on the app to building a technology business. He recalls an incident where he had to help a customer with her laundry and realised that extra work by drivers needed to be compensated. This in turn led to the introduction of waiting fees and multiple stops on the app. Kevin's interest in technology began when he moved to Indonesia in 2011 to be part of the country's emerging tech industry, which has since become vibrant. This early bet has paid off and Kevin cherishes the experience.
Overcoming Challenges When Building a Company Outside Silicon Valley: Building a company in underdeveloped talent and funding ecosystems requires being scrappy and utilizing remote work. Focusing on unique solutions and understanding market dynamics is crucial for success, particularly in Southeast Asia's rapidly growing market.
Building a company outside of Silicon Valley can be challenging, especially when local talent and funding ecosystems are underdeveloped. Remote work and being scrappy are key to success in these markets, along with understanding unique market dynamics. Companies should focus on finding solutions that are unique to their markets rather than copying existing models. Southeast Asia, specifically Indonesia, has a tremendous population and a unique pace of adoption for products with great product market fit, making it an exciting and valuable market for companies to explore.
Unprecedented Growth of Gojek in Indonesia: A Sign of Hunger for Better Solutions: Gojek's impressive growth in Indonesia highlights the population's desire for better technology and products to solve common problems. Developing regions like Southeast Asia present unique opportunities for rapid company scaling.
Gojek, an Indonesian ride-hailing and delivery app, experienced unprecedented growth of more than 100% month-on-month for the first 16-18 months after its launch in 2015. This was due to a combination of the young population in Indonesia being excited to try new things and a demand for better technology and products to improve common day-to-day problems. The successful growth of Gojek highlights the hunger of the population for better solutions, which can lead to the rapid building of companies to a very meaningful scale. This is a unique trait of developing regions like Southeast Asia.
Gojek Co-founder Kevin Aluwi's Interview Insights: Passionate and detailed answers on an obscure subject can impress interviewers. Aluwi recommends ARC Browser and Steam Deck, and stresses on clarity and speed for effective decision-making.
In a podcast interview, Kevin Aluwi, co-founder of Gojek, shared his favorite interview question and what he looks for in an answer. He wants to hear about a subject or activity a person has been obsessed with for a long time, especially if it's obscure, because it shows passion and the ability to sell and think in a structured and detailed way. Aluwi also discussed two products he loves, including the ARC Browser for better tab management and the Steam Deck for portable gaming. Finally, he shared an important lesson Gojek learned about accountability and decision-making, emphasizing the need for clarity and speed to improve execution.
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