Indonesia’s GoTo Group jumps into crypto space with $8.5 million acquisition of local crypto exchange startup PT Kripto Maksima Koin

Indonesia’s biggest tech company GoTo Gojek Tokopedia has acquired a local crypto exchange startup PT Kripto Maksima Koin for 124.84 billion rupiahs ($8.38 million) to expand into the cryptocurrency space, the company said in a filing with the stock exchange regulator on Monday.

In a statement Late Monday, GoTo Said, “We believe that blockchain technology may play a mainstream role in the future of finance.” The company did not elaborate on further plans for the newly acquired entity. PT Kripto Maksima Koin is one of the 25 Indonesian crypto exchanges that have been granted licenses by the country’s Commodity Futures Trading Regulatory Agency, known as Bappebti.

We wrote about GoTo back in April after the then e-commerce tech startup GoTo raised $1.5 billion in IPO to become Indonesia’s fourth most-valuable company at a $28B valuation. The company took advantage of Indonesia’s IPO listing rules which have led to record venture funding for Indonesia startups for the $70 billion digital market of Southeast Asia’s largest economy.

Cryptocurrency has gained popularity in recent years in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy with the total transaction volume of crypto assets in 2021 up more than 1,000% at 859.4 trillion rupiahs ($57.70 billion) compared to a year earlier, according to a report from Reuters, citing the agency’s data.

GoTo currently has over 2.5 million registered driver-partners, 14 million registered merchants, and 55 million annual transacting users as of the end of September 2021. The merger helps Gojek and Tokopedia take on larger, regional rivals such as Singapore-headquartered Grab and internet company Sea, which operates the e-commerce platform Shopee and has a digital payments and financial services business. GoTo Group’s business now spans ride-hailing, financial services, and e-commerce.

In a statement, GoTo Group CEO Andre Soelistyo said, “Indonesia and Southeast Asia are some of the most exciting growth markets in the world, and the backing we’ve secured shows the confidence that investors have in the region’s rapidly expanding digital economy and our market-leading position.”

Founded in 2010 by Kevin Aluwi, Michaelangelo Moran, and Nadiem Makarim, Gojek is an app for ordering food, commuting, digital payments, shopping, hyper-local delivery, getting a massage, and two dozen services. It is Indonesia’s first and fastest-growing decacorn building an on-demand empire across Southeast Asia. The Gojek app was launched in 2015 in Indonesia and is now the largest consumer transactional technology group on a GTV-basis in Southeast Asia.