On Monday (22 July), Indonesian ‘unicorn’ Gojek revealed a brand new look to mark the evolution it has gone through since the company was founded almost nine years ago.
The rebrand has begun rolling out in Indonesia and Singapore, so users will soon see the company in a new light, with a fresh selection of colours and fonts.
But most notably, its new logo now features a nearly-rounded ring enclosing a dot in the middle—they call this ‘Solv’.
Besides the Solv’s appealing simplicity, there’s a reason why Gojek decided to ditch the faithful old motorcycle (with a wifi symbol on top) that has served it for so many years in operation.
Gojek’s name came from a play on the Indonesian term ‘ojek‘, which refers to motorcycle taxis, when they first started operations with just 20 ojek drivers back in the day.
Its logo change symbolises that Gojek has grown from a humble Jakarta-based motor-taxi hailing service, into “Southeast Asia’s leading super app” that covers much more.
They have since diversified into multiple verticals, providing more than 19 different products and services.
Looking at where they are now, the company recognised that their logo was getting dated quickly, as it no longer fully represented the breadth of what the company does, and its style and details made it tough to adapt for new uses too.
In an announcement video, Gojek explains that the Solv symbol can be seen as many things, from a search tool representing how Gojek helps users solve anything they’re searching for, to a pinned location on a map.
At the same time, they haven’t forgotten their core as the logo also resembles the top-down view of a Gojek driver.
This rebrand comes as Gojek hits a 1,100% growth in transactions on its platform in the last three years, from June 2016 to June 2019.
The firm now serves over 500 cities across Southeast Asia, with over 2 million drivers, 400,000 merchants and 60,000 service providers under its network.
“We look forward to the next chapter of our growth, not only in Indonesia – where we have the highest number of monthly active users compared to other on-demand platforms – but across the other Southeast Asian markets that we have expanded to over the past year”, said Gojek Group President Andre Soelistyo.
Moving forward, the company mentioned it could be eyeing expansion to Malaysia next, but did not elaborate much about these plans.
Not A Super App in S’pore…Yet
Perhaps Gojek’s achievements may not be so visible to users in Singapore, but to be fair, its time here has been short compared to its almost-a-decade of history in Indonesia.
Gojek launched in Singapore less than a year ago in November 2018, and later crossed a milestone hitting 10 million rides after 6 months here.
As far as Singapore users are concerned, Gojek is still just a simple ride-hailing app for now—unlike its super app in Indonesia that offers everything from payment to logistics and even laundry services.
But that could soon change as the company revealed that it’s finally working out how to start its food services in Singapore.
Before that comes to fruition, Gojek has to solve a similar problem as when they first entered Singapore’s ride-hailing scene:
Their model was initially built on motorcycle-taxis, which were not allowed for safety reasons under Singapore’s regulations, requiring them to pivot slightly and launch with their Go-Car product here.
According to Soelistyo, the firm’s strategy for food delivery has been to keep operations lean by deploying the existing fleet of ride-hailing drivers.
While this is how the firm has driven its food delivery success in Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand, they will have to develop a new strategy for Singapore once again.
Currently, Grab has the stronghold as a super app in Singapore, with ride-hailing, food delivery, parcel delivery, e-scooter rental, e-payment and rewards, and their more recent addition of hotel bookings.
It could be exciting to see Gojek start to roll out an array of services, especially since the ground they’ve covered in Indonesia and other Southeast Asian markets is wider than anything we’ve seen in Singapore.
