In an age of consumer-centricity, Indonesia’s super app GO-JEK has achieved its current position of dominance by focusing equally on service providers, according to a top executive at the company.

“If you think about how to deliver a true consumer experience that is holistic, you have to think about the service providers, because ultimately we are a service company,” said Aldi Haryopratomo, CEO of GO-PAY, one of the “constellation of super apps” that is GO-JEK

GO-JEK began as a ride hailing app, where it quickly learned it needed to understand its drivers, he explained to the recent Money 20/20 conference in Singapore. (For more, read WARC’s report: The rise of the super-app: GO-JEK eyes payments and services domination.)

“Every single driver and… [their spouse] wanted their kid to have a better life than they have”, he said, while many also “dream of having a house, a real roof that they own”.

The former led GO-JEK to set an educational savings program for drivers in place so they could work towards sending their children to school; the latter saw the company work with banks to enable loans that would allow them to own a home.

“More recently, we are even helping the drivers get access to better daily goods,” he said. “On the app, as a driver you can buy these things at a different price – because we have access to scale.”

Merchants were “the next phase of revolution”. Having built an inclusive digital payment ecosystem via acquisitions, “last year was the first time we started providing services for offline merchants and offline companies, and transactions grew eight times – it’s actually the fastest growing product in GO-JEK’s history,” Haryopratomo reported.

The features of the super app for merchants include: a POS system for sales tracking, attendance and management of cash flow; financial services such as loans and invoice financing; deals and vouchers to offer online and offline deals to customers; other payment options, such as through debit and credit cards.

“When you go offline, you start seeing that there are absolutely more needs,” he added. “Most people are really fixated on the consumer. But the merchant is where you can have some of the biggest opportunities from.”

Sourced from WARC