GoJek: An Urban Subculture
As a comparable platform industry archetype to Grab, GoJek is an Indonesian ride hailing, food delivery, logistics and payments (‘fintech’) platform. GoJek is the first ever Indonesian private enterprise to be classified as a ‘unicorn’ startup (a Silicon Valley originated appellation for fast growing, billion-dollar-worth technology companies). As of the time of writing GoJek’s driver fleet currently exceeds one million ‘pengojek’ who ride an array of motorcycles, cars and rickshaws across urban Indonesia. In contrast to the form of SOE-led technology development (like the IPTN), GoJek, a private company, is the current forerunner of translating foreign-origin innovation into Indonesian imaginary using a clearly nationalist tone in its communications; as with uplifting political slogans such as #AnakBangsaBisa! (Children of the nation can!), which was most prominently employed throughout its expansion phases into Vietnam and Thailand during 2018.
Go-Viet, subsidiary of Go-Jek in Vietnam.
Mutually, the Indonesian government has been vocally enthusiastic about GoJek’s globally renowned achievements, assisting them to tap into global investment channels by inviting them in presidential visits abroad (as with Jokowi in 2015 to the United States), while positioning the company in political rhetoric as a local champion that demonstrates the prowess of innovation in contemporary Indonesia. As a significant occasion in its relatively short history, Go-Jek was banned on December 18, 2015 by the Transport Ministry of Indonesia — but only for a single day, as President of the Republic of Indonesia, Jokowi immediately lifted the ban, in order “not to prohibit local innovation”. This is indeed a telling incident that exposes how highly Go-Jek is currently regarded by the Jokowi administration in Indonesia as a local champion in the business landscape of the country. So much so that, Go-Jek’s well publicised expansion into Vietnam, the company’s first market outside of Indonesia, was accompanied by the President himself. Building on such political potencies, Go-Jek has grown to become a household name in any debate concerning contemporary technological developments in Indonesia.
Co-founders of Go-Jek and President Jokowi
Intricate mobile platforms such as GoJek do not merely connect people within a software, but also reformat the everyday usage and meaning of relevant hardware. GoJek branded helmets are an example of subtly reformatted everyday tools to incite connotations of ‘safety’ and motorist jackets boast the Indonesian flag that resemble national troops’ outfits. The phenomenon of reformatting offline tools (hardware) to fit an online realm (software) tends to be naturally revealing of companies’ general positioning. Grab, for example, intendedly communicates itself as a regional company ‘that drives Southeast Asia forward’ with a rather neutral visuality in their gear (no use of flags or country specific overtures in their corporate communications/street banners), whereas GoJek is loud and clear with their nationalist tone in all their visual presence across the Indonesian archipelago. Regarding the jacket visuality in particular, it can be observed that GoJek chooses the ‘national’ colours of each market it operates: Halal-oriented/Islamic colours of green and black in Indonesia, red in the communist state of Vietnam (where their operations where expanded as Go-Viet in 2018) and the royal yellow in Thailand (where their mobile application is named GET! since 2019).
Creating a simple, user-friendly and ‘human-sounding’ smartphone application, GoJek in a sense legitimised, modernised and rationalised existing habits of travel and transaction which were often deemed ‘illicit’ and ‘lower-class’. Offering its riders more affordable, safer and fixed-rate rides (which avoided them from daily nuisance of price-haggling), the application harnessed the desirable aspects of motorbike based mobility with the convenience of cashless and traceable digital transactions. The company built the majority of its worker pool from traditional ojek drivers, outfitting the nondescript ‘man on the street’ with a celebrated corporate identity, and a vivid new look (Lee, 2018).
The significance of the tangible components and visuality that make up a physical ‘GoJek’ demonstrates how the internet platform economy is materialised on the ground. GoJek is normatively a “super-app”, a digital application that unites “…disparate technological forces into a power greater than the sum of its parts” (Rothstein, 2015) as it links together the technologies of a motor vehicle, a smartphone and the relevant gear (helmets, jackets, mouth masks) that is involved in the performativity of the services demanded by its users. Echoing Abdoumaliq Simone’s mantra “…one thing is not one thing, in the everyday life of metropolitan Indonesia”; the common practice of reassembling seemingly mundane tools and gear to allow the maximisation of the economic value they can create beyond their sole personal usage.
An improvised, DIY Go-Jek helmet, bought on a local e-commerce sites
Essentially, GoJek’s highly visual form of innovation emerges as an improvised regulatory force that appeals to the consumer-based values of an emerging Indonesian middle class and ‘corrects’ the unruliness of the otherwise chaotic city, while it attractes the precarious class to join its ranks with its technologized charisma (Lee, 2018). GoJek often employs symbolism and corporate rhetoric of ‘unity’ and ‘belonging’ both in its territorial settings such as GoJek bases (pangkalan) and virtual settings such as WhatsApp or Telegram group chats. Indeed, there are credible local accounts of street food workers in Jakarta, who were not riding for GoJek, commonly observed to be wearing GoJek jackets as a rather eccentric symbol of status and affiliation. It is also not uncommon to observe many young Indonesians tinkering with the GoJek helmet design, creating some of their own styles and selling them on e-commerce channels. As an even more substantial case, a child born on February 2019 in the in the Lampung province, was named after Go-Pay, the e-payment platform by ride hailing unicorn GoJek. Resembling an urban subculture, GoJek is contemporarily beyond a ride-hailing and delivery platform, as it rapidly became an unescapable facet of Indonesian urban texture.
Onat has been Regional Director for Southeast Asia at wamo Technology Ltd., (a UK-licensed fintech startup) since the beginning of 2020. He ‘s also been working on Gojek as his PhD case study at the National University of Singapore since the summer of 2017. His love for QR codes began during his time in Shanghai and he’s tried his best not to carry cash ever since.
