A company which started inside a small garage in Indonesia has today taken leaps to claim the title of being a “Unicorn” in Southeast Asia. Bike- sharing app Go-Jek has now launched an engineering facility in Bangalore that will also serve as its headquarters in India. The facility is expected to become the training centre for hundreds of engineers, both from Indian and Indonesia.
Founder Nadiem Makarim, who strongly believes in the fact that ‘when traffic stops, life can’t,’ said that his company has created the first industrial bridge between Indonesia and India.
Makarim’s GoJek, which has already bought Pune-based mobile app developer for an undisclosed amount, said it’s open to ‘acquiring talent’ both via acquisitions and hiring. Leftshift, which has now moved to GoJek’s Bangalore engineering centre, is known for designing and engineering mobile applications for marquee Indian startups like BookMyShow and Walnut.
Makarim did not give the exact details of the number of people his company plans to onboard in India, but said that they are particularly interested in people who “fit the bill.” In the near future the company is keen on expanding into in India but has no such plans in the near future.
Hiring in India
GO-Jek has more than 25 million app downloads and its platform powers Indonesian equivalents of Ola, Paytm, Swiggy, Grofers, Zomato and UrbanClap and a comparable scale. Its GO-FOOD business alone does more daily orders than all Indian food-tech startups combined, the company said.
Speaking on the recruitment process in India, Piotr Jakubowski, Chief of Marketing at Go-Jek, said that the biggest challenge while hiring remains the fact that it’s a product that does not exist in the country.
Go-Jek’s announcement gives reasons for the Bangalore to cheer as the Silicon-Valley of India is reeling under the loss of R&D jobs at India units of Twitter and eBay. Both these centres have seen jobs being lost due to restructuring at the companies’ global headquarters.
In August 2016, Go-Jek scooped over $550 million in a new round of funding led by KKR and Warburg Pincus LLC, the largest ever for an Indonesian technology startup. The company is also backed by Sequoia Capital, KKR and DST Global.
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SNEHA BANERJEE
Based in Bengaluru (India), covers funding and entrepreneurial journeys in the startup space. Previously covered U.S. and Canadian equities at Reuters\
