How GO-JEK Touch Others’ Life with Smartphone
In 2007, Apple released its first generation iPhone, a handheld that took the world by storm and touted as the game changer in the smartphone industry. Even someone who had never owned any iPhones, like me, would agree that the device has shaped our life in digital era.
The year of 2007 was only 11 years ago, but today it would be a struggle to remember how we got through the day before smartphones exist.
Now, as smartphones are increasingly playing fundamental role in the society, many have started to question if the small device can play a bigger role in other parts of the world where profit is not the number one priority, but social impact is.
A crucial question arises, can smartphone do what governments and banks have been struggling to do for years: include people that are excluded from global economy?
During a recent World Economic Forum on ASEAN in Hanoi, GO-JEK founder and CEO Nadiem Makarim said that smartphone have developed far beyond a communication device.
Smartphone has evolved to becoming a tool to connect supply and demand, a medium to bridge people looking for a ride with vehicle owners, and now, something that has never been imagined in the past: a hand to reach everyone and bring them to a formal financial system.
Under GO-PAY system, for instance, hundreds of thousands GO-RIDE drivers have been facilitated to have access to bank and get the advantage of savings and credit services.
There are three things that Nadiem said could be provided to people living in poverty or slightly above the poverty line are: access to cheap products, access to financial inclusion and access to jobs.
“People might take the discussion far to digital literacy and other issues. But the basic thing for me is giving everyone a smartphone,” he said in a discussion themed Accelerating Inequality Reduction on ASEAN.
In GO-JEK we work every day to improve people’s lives and we can proudly tell everyone that we are an Indonesian startup with a social mission. This cornerstone has helped us to evolve from motorcycle ride-hailing service into an on-demand mobile platform, providing range of services that includes transportation, logistics, food delivery and mobile payments.
Through our payment gateway system, GO-PAY, we bridge hundreds of thousands of our drivers, merchants and micro-entrepreneurs to the formal financial system that would pave the way to them to savings and credit facilities.
We are proud to learn that recently UNSGSA Queen Máxima of the Netherlands acknowledged our hard work through her annual report.
Based on the report released by the UN Secretary-General that focuses on development through financial inclusion, GO-JEK has set an example on how tech start-up created a successful enterprise by building financial inclusion in our value proposition.
Smartphones can be many things. It can be a communication device, it can be a gadget to help you meeting new people or to find your next ride home.
But for our drivers and merchants, smartphones in essence is a ladder. Through facilitate people giving a ride for other, delivering goods from one place to another, or selling food and beverages, smartphones has helped them to climb the economic pyramid and earn a better life.
In GO-JEK we believe that technology has an important role in solving problem and we, therefore, is on a mission to find world’s brightest talents to solve bigger problem.
