Grab, which quickly established dominance in many parts of South East Asia, has yet to find the same sure footing in Indonesia, the region’s biggest economy. Instead, the GoTo Group is still in the lead among the 270 million Indonesians, many of whom regularly choose Gojek for ride-hailing and Tokopedia for e-commerce over Grab’s options.
An August 25 Bloomberg report says that both companies have faltered since publicly debuting in the stock market, but Grab’s losses have been bigger than GoTo’s.
Moreover, GoTo is now worth US$26 billion (S$36.2 billion), or around twice that of Grab’s market value of US$13.32 billion (S$18.5 billion).
Grab has said it will publish its second-quarter results before the markets open in the United States on Thursday, Aug 25), and GoTo has announced it will release its results on Tuesday next week (Aug 30).
In its home turf, Singapore, however, Grab is still in the lead, even though public sentiment about the company soured somewhat recently after Grab announced it would shorten its grace waiting time and cancellation period from five to three minutes.
And GoTo’s dominance in Indonesia has meant that it has been outperforming its rival.
Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Nathan Naidu said in a July 20 report, “GoTo’s advantage as a homegrown Indonesian brand and its synergy with Tokopedia may let the country’s biggest tech firm defend food-delivery market share from Grab, the category’s leader in Southeast Asia, and improve profitability.”
Last year, Grab still held the lead over GoTo in Indonesia in the food delivery market, 49 per cent to 43 per cent, according to Momentum Works’ second annual “Food Delivery Platforms in Southeast Asia,” which was published in January.
Bloomberg added that GoTo is down by around 3 per cent since April when it debuted its initial public offering in Jakarta.
Grab, however, is down by more than 60 per cent after it became a publicly traded company after it merged with Brad Gerstner’s Altimeter Growth Corp. in December of last year. /TISG