Facebook Inc and PayPal Holdings Inc yesterday said they are investing in Gojek, a big boost for the Indonesian start-up’s digital payments business that propels the US companies into a fast-growing Asian Internet arena.
It is the second international investment Facebook has made in the past six weeks, with a goal of getting more local businesses online, after the social media giant paid US$5.7 billion for about 10 percent of India’s Reliance Jio.
It plans to build a commerce and payments business around WhatsApp, on top of letting businesses use the messaging service to interact with customers.
Photo: Reuters
The deal marks Facebook’s first investment in an Indonesian company and is a major boost for the nation’s largest start-up, a ride-hailing giant that has morphed into a provider of services like payments and meal delivery.
Gojek is now backed by some of the world’s largest Internet companies from Alphabet Inc’s Google to China’s Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊), helping it compete against Singapore’s Grab Holdings Inc.
“WhatsApp in particular can be instrumental in creating a more digital Indonesia by bringing more people into one of the fastest-growing digital economies in the world,” Facebook said in a blog post.
It did not specify how much it is investing and a spokesperson declined to share details.
Facebook and PayPal joined Gojek’s current funding round, which closed at US$1.2 billion around March at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Gojek and Grab aim to become Southeast Asian consumers’ default, all-purpose app, similar to Tencent’s WeChat. Gojek has drawn hundreds of thousands of merchants to its platform, giving them access to more than 170 million users across the region.
The Indonesian start-up, whose backers also include Singaporean state investor Temasek Holdings Pte, has said it would deploy fresh capital to keep expanding, despite global economic turbulence.
It recently acquired a mobile point-of-sale start-up called Moka for about US$130 million, people familiar with the deal have said.
Gojek, which debuted an app for hailing motorbike taxis in Jakarta in 2015, now also offers a score of other on-demand services, such as house cleaning and medicine delivery, and was last valued at US$10 billion, according to CB Insights.
“We see our role as a convener of global tech expertise, facilitating collaboration that will ultimately lead to a better future for everyone in our region,” Gojek cochief executive officer Andre Soelistyo said in a statement.
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) today announced that his company has selected "Beitou Shilin" in Taipei for its new Taiwan office, called Nvidia Constellation, putting an end to months of speculation. Industry sources have said that the tech giant has been eyeing the Beitou Shilin Science Park as the site of its new overseas headquarters, and speculated that the new headquarters would be built on two plots of land designated as "T17" and "T18," which span 3.89 hectares in the park. "I think it's time for us to reveal one of the largest products we've ever built," Huang said near the
China yesterday announced anti-dumping duties as high as 74.9 percent on imports of polyoxymethylene (POM) copolymers, a type of engineering plastic, from Taiwan, the US, the EU and Japan. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce’s findings conclude a probe launched in May last year, shortly after the US sharply increased tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, computer chips and other imports. POM copolymers can partially replace metals such as copper and zinc, and have various applications, including in auto parts, electronics and medical equipment, the Chinese ministry has said. In January, it said initial investigations had determined that dumping was taking place, and implemented preliminary
Intel Corp yesterday reinforced its determination to strengthen its partnerships with Taiwan’s ecosystem partners including original-electronic-manufacturing (OEM) companies such as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and chipmaker United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電). “Tonight marks a new beginning. We renew our new partnership with Taiwan ecosystem,” Intel new chief executive officer Tan Lip-bu (陳立武) said at a dinner with representatives from the company’s local partners, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the US chip giant’s presence in Taiwan. Tan took the reins at Intel six weeks ago aiming to reform the chipmaker and revive its past glory. This is the first time Tan
CUSTOMERS’ BURDEN: TSMC already has operations in the US and is a foundry, so any tariff increase would mostly affect US customers, not the company, the minister said Taiwanese manufacturers are “not afraid” of US tariffs, but are concerned about being affected more heavily than regional economic competitors Japan and South Korea, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said. “Taiwan has many advantages that other countries do not have, the most notable of which is its semiconductor ecosystem,” Kuo said. The US “must rely on Taiwan” to boost its microchip manufacturing capacities, Kuo said in an interview ahead of his one-year anniversary in office tomorrow. Taiwan has submitted a position paper under Section 232 of the US Trade Expansion Act to explain the “complementary relationship” between Taiwan and the US
RSS