A practical illustration of how Gojek is now ‘the city’ and in itself became ‘urban infrastructure’ is its partnership with Kopi Kenangan, a highly popular coffee chain in Indonesia. The coffee chain, famous for its local, extra sweet flavoured coffee that typically metropolitan white-collar Indonesians enjoy, has built its business model on Gojek’s delivery infrastructure. Kopi Kenangan, instead of going through the hassle of building a delivery network itself, opted to circulate its instant coffee services through ‘the city’ by utilising Gojek’s dense lattice of drivers who are already connected to a wide base of consumers within a simultaneously virtual and physical realm.
Another sample of Gojek morphing into a mainstream form of urban infrastructure is its partnership with the recently launched Jakarta subway system. The operator of the capital city’s mass rapid transit train network, MRT Jakarta, began integrating its systems with Gojek during 2019, to provide a wider passenger-feeder base for the MRT. The integration provides designated areas at MRT stations for Gojek’s driver-partners, where they can drop off and pick up passengers. Such a measure might seem trivial to an outsider, but is a subtle and useful fix for anyone navigating Jakarta’s notorious physical infrastructure.
Conventionally, large swarms of motorcycles at station exits often become too confusing to navigate — the Gojek you just called could be any of them. MRT passengers, hence, tend to opt out of calling a motorcycle taxi to get to their final destination, often choosing to wait at the taxi stand instead, adding to the already crammed traffic. The Gojek-MRT arrangement essentially streamlines the first/last mile journeys in the city, enabling passengers to flow in and out of the main nodes of the public transport more efficiently. Ultimately, such integrations with many other forms of mass circulation illustrate how Gojek took motorcycle taxi driving in Indonesia from being a disengaged, underground and illicit practice to become a well-recognised and celebrated system both locally and on the global stage.
