Indonesia's Gojek has become a decacord, and one of the largest ride-hailing service in Southeast Asia.
With its sheer size and influence, the company is launching an accelerator program called 'Gojek Xcelerate', in partnership with local startup hub Digitaraya, by collaborating with experts from Google Developers Launchpad, global management firm McKinsey & Company, and UBS Bank.
And not to mention, also including "first-hand lessons from the very people behind Gojek’s journey in becoming Asia’s SuperApp."
Gojek Xcelerate aims to provide a series of acceleration programs for 20 selected local startups for six months, by involving initiatives to target eligible startups' business growth, growth hacking, business model development, and machine learning applications.
According to Gojek on its Xcelerate web page:
"This mission has once again lead us into Fortune’s list of Companies that Changed The World, and now we want to take things further; as Indonesia’s first Unicorn StartUp, we want to help fellow Indonesian StartUps become Asia’s next Unicorns!"
Gojek Xcelerate acceleration program wants to take participants through a full month of in-class trainings and intensive 1:1 mentoring sessions.
Those that are selected can benefit from accessing Gojek and Digitaraya’s network of mentors.
"This course isn’t for anyone though," said Gojek, as it requires "participants to clear through our rigorous screening process to join our first 4 (four) batch of Gojek Xcelerate."
At the end of each batch, a Demo Day will be held where startups can pitch their business ideas and earn a chance for their service to be integrated into the Gojek app.
According to research by Google and Temasek, Indonesia has the largest market size in Southeast Asia, with a projected contribution of $100 billion by 2025.
This is unsurprising since Indonesia is the largest country in the Southeast Asia, with a population of more than 271 million people. Not to mention that the country consisting a vast archipelago is considered the most powerful economy of the developing world in the region, as well as the third largest in Asia after China and India.
And with this accelerator program by Gojek, the company looks to capitalize on that opportunity and pave the way for the country’s next unicorn.
In 2018, Gojek’s competitor in the ride-hailing business, Grab, launched its own accelerator program called Velocity for growth-stage startups. With the initiative, the Singapore-based firm aims to plug inductees into its “expertise, technical resources, and networks.”