E-commerce tech startup GoTo raises $1.5 billion in IPO to become Indonesia’s fourth most-valuable company at a $28B valuation

Goto Group,  a unicorn tech startup formed last year as a result of a merger of ride-hailing-to-payments company Gojek and e-commerce giant Tokopedia, has raised $1.1 billion from its highly anticipated initial public offering (IPO), which the company hopes will help boost Indonesia slumping tech sector.

According to Reuters, GoTo will debut in Jakarta on Monday in the climax of one of the world’s biggest IPO so far this year. Late last month, we wrote about the company after it announced it has received sufficient investor orders for its IPO, according to an exclusive report from Reuters, citing two sources familiar with the matters.

GoTo had said in the past that it was set to be valued at $26.2 billion to $28.8 billion, a valuation that would make it Indonesia’s most valuable tech startup and the fourth-biggest listed firm. The IPO is expected to be priced in early April and will then be open to retail investors.

The Goto Group is also taking 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.

Goto is following in the footsteps of Bukalapak, another E-commerce tech startup that recently raised $1.5 billion in Indonesia’s largest IPO at a $6 billion valuation.

In a statement, Shane Chesson, a partner at Openspace Ventures, one of Gojek’s earliest investors, said: “GoTo is the most differentiated technology company in Southeast Asia. Relative to its peers, diversification is going to be a very important thing that investors will need to get on top of and understand how to properly value the business.”

We wrote about Goto in November when the startup raised $1.3 billion in a pre-initial public offering (IPO) funding round led by Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. Backers in the pre-IPO funding round include tech heavyweights like Google and Tencent, Singapore state investor Temasek, Malaysian sovereign wealth fund Permodalan Nasional Berhad as well as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

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.