Indonesia’s Go-Jek invests in online media start-up

Indonesian ride-hailing and online payment company GoJek has invested in digital media startup Kumparan as part of its expansion into online content, it said.

Go-Jek, whose backers include Alphabe Inc’s Google and China’s Tencent Holdings, has grown rapidly since launching eight years ago in Indonesia, a country with a population of more than 250 million people.

The company already offers a wide range of app-based services outside ride-hailing, such as food delivery and movie tickets, as it competes with the other main ride-hailing app operating in Indonesia, Singapore-based Grab, which bought the Southeast Asian business of Uber Technologies this year.

Go-Jek said the investment in Jakarta-based media startup Kumparan had been done through its recently launched venture capital arm GoVentures, but did not disclose the size of its funding.

Kumparan is a hybrid news and social media platform that enables users to create content.

“There will be a series of strategic collaborations that we are exploring with Kumparan in supporting Indonesia’s technological developments,” said Go-Jek’s corporate affairs chief Nila Marita. Go-Jek is betting heavily on becoming an online multimedia content provider for Indonesia and set up its own in-house studio in 2018 to produce original films.