Gojek vs Grab - Dawn of the Super App with Jon Russell

Gojek vs Grab - Dawn of the Super App with Jon Russell
Jon Russell, reporter from TechCrunch, discuss the continuing war between Gojek and Grab with the dawn of the super app and Honestbee's recent predicament.

Jon Russell, reporter from TechCrunch, joined us in a conversation about the continuing war between Gojek and Grab with the dawn of the super app. We started our conversation on Honestbee’s recent predicament, the growth in series B-D funding for startups across Southeast Asia and Eduardo Saverin’s B-Capital recent raising of 406M for their fund. Then we dived deep into Grab vs Gojek and their narrative from fundraising valuation to the paradigm of super app, and discuss whether each of them can pull it off with their different strategies from Grab’s financial services to Gojek’s multiple acquisitions in the market. Last but not least, we discuss Uber’s recent IPO S1-filing and their implications to Didi, Grab and Ola and what it means for the Asian ecosystem for the long term.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

  • Jon Russell (@jonrussell, LinkedIn, Newsletter, Personal Site, TechCrunch Profile), Reporter at TechCrunch [0:23]
  • Gojek vs Grab: Dawn of Super Apps in Southeast Asia [6:24]
    • Let’s start with their fundraising first, how much money have Grab and Gojek have raised so far? [6:40]
    • Has Gojek actually reached US$10B valuation and what happened there? [7:08]
    • Of course, with a truckload of cash, they are touting the narrative of the super app. Gojek has more less implemented it successfully in Indonesia & still growing their services, is Grab getting there with the super app? [9:29]
    • There are very few critiques on the super app coming from our friends Tim Culpan from Bloomberg and Michael Smith from Seedplus VC, do you think that the media narrative is being too over optimistic on the super app?  [11:58]
    • Grab has focused a lot on financial services in the past few months, what is the strategy there? Will they end up spinning off their financial arm with Paypal and Ant Financial backing them? [16:33]
    • Why Uber is still in Southeast Asia
      • Uber still have a HQ in Southeast Asia despite leaving the market, what are they still doing there? [18:16]
      • We have seen the Uber S1 filing for their IPO, so what have we learned about Uber with relation to Didi and Grab? [20:16]
    • What are the implications for Grab and Didi given Uber owns a significant stake in them? What does that mean for these companies in the longer term? [23:40]
    • Will either Gojek or Grab get Honestbee in the end? [26:36]
  • Closing [27:20]
    • Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? [27:22]
      • Jon’s recommendation: Doing daily exercise with a run and the Flux app.
    • How do my audience find you? [28:12]
  • Announcement of Analyse Asia 5th Anniversary Live Show in WeWork Singapore, 6.30 pm on 5 Sep 2019 in Singapore [28:41]

 

Podcast Information:

The show is hosted by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong & weibo) and are sponsored by Ideal Workspace (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) with their new Altizen Desk (Twitter, Facebook, Medium). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong.

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