The Gojek & Grab super app playbook

In the ASEAN region, there are a slew of companies valued at over $100 million USD. This chart from Cento Ventures provides a non-exhaustive overview:

At the top of the list, rubbing shoulders with publicly-traded Sea Limited, are two super apps: Grab & Gojek. Unlike China’s WeChat which began as a messaging service (see the previous article: Why super apps are proliferating across emerging markets), Gojek & Grab both offer ride-hailing as their core service and have become ‘must-own’ apps, not least due to the region’s underdeveloped public transport infrastructure (outside of Singapore).

Together, they’ve raised ~$15 billion dollars from some of the biggest names in tech — Gojek is backed by Google, Tencent, and JD.com, while Grab’s investors include Microsoft, SoftBank, and Didi Chuxing. This war chest hasn’t been sitting idle; over the past several years, the two companies have burnt through billions as they’ve jostled to establish dominant positions across the region and outcompeted world-class rivals.

In early 2013, Uber entered the region and spent, according to the Wall Street Journal, ~$200 million annually to compete against the young upstarts. Ultimately, however, in March 2018 Uber sold its Southeast Asia operations to Grab, receiving a 27.5% stake of the company in return.

“We used to be…