By Catherine Hindra Sutjahyo, GoTo Group Director and Head of Food and Indonesia Sales & Ops
Apparently, shopping on an empty stomach can make you over-spend1, so we were particularly proud to introduce GoFood to the Tokopedia app last week. Doing so will bring benefits for all of our customers - consumers, merchants and drivers - and I wanted to share a bit of insight on the thinking that lies behind this latest GoTo ecosystem integration.
#1: Our Consumers
For the longest time, I had assumed that the authentic GoFood experience would only live within the “walls” of the Gojek app. After all, food delivery is core to the Gojek experience and it has been part of the app one way or another since its early days. But then the Gojek and Tokopedia combination happened and this triggered the question of whether this way of thinking was still the way to go.
At the end of the day, what we care the most about is the user experience - keeping it convenient, consistent and uniquely “GoFood”. How can we suggest the right restaurant/menu to satisfy their cravings among the 41 million menus that we have? How can we keep things efficient, minimizing the number of clicks that stand between a user and their dinner. How can we simplify things so they can order their food while multitasking - staying on top of the other things that life throws at them (think of those valuable five minutes between meetings, helping kids with homework, pajama parties that need a middle of the night boost of martabak).
If we stay true to this focus, we eventually reach the conclusion that the entry point for such users doesn’t really matter; indeed, the more entry points we can provide to users the better.
The creation of the GoTo ecosystem was the nudge we needed. Given the ubiquity of GoFood and the size and reach of Tokopedia, we were presented with an opportunity to spread the GoFood experience to many more users by bringing the two services together. We had realized that there was a significant number of Tokopedia users who were not using GoFood and this was the perfect opportunity to show them what they were missing. Rather than trying to “force” these users to use GoFood directly, if they are already comfortable with the Tokopedia app (its flow, UI/ UX, etc), why not deliver a GoFood experience right to their digital front door, where they already transact.
#2: Our Merchants
99% of GoFood merchants are micro and small businesses (MSMEs) and the most difficult thing for any MSME is accessing customers.
Introducing GoFood to Tokopedia means our merchants have a presence on Indonesia’s largest e-commerce marketplace without lifting a single finger. When the order comes in, the merchants process it like any other GoFood order. They too don’t care about the user’s point of entry, they only need to focus on providing the best quality of food within the shortest possible preparation time.
It is our job to focus on bringing them as many orders as possible and increasing access to customers, not theirs. By surfacing our merchant partners in multiple platforms (i.e, Gojek and Tokopedia), we are increasing their exposure to a wider user base and thus, growing their business in a way that no other platform is able to offer.
This integration between GoFood and Tokopedia involves linking the Tokopedia front end system with GoBiz, the merchant platform where GoFood merchants access order, content and promo management. This is critical to our merchant partners since one of their key pain points is training (and retraining) their staff on how to use/ manage online delivery platforms. This approach allows merchants to be present in another source of demand, without any additional resource or incremental cost.
#3: Our Drivers
Last but not least, anyone who is familiar with Gojek, even in passing, would know that our driver partners (mitra driver) are the foundation of our mission; they are our inspiration and are the genesis of how Gojek (and now GoTo) began.
It is our continuous problem statement to think of ways to improve their livelihoods by bringing more orders and income-earning opportunities to them. The integration between GoFood and Tokopedia was driven by this same motivation. To bring more demand to our driver partners. Over the past two and a half years, the pandemic has hit everyone, particularly drivers quite hard, and we have constantly worked to find ways to compensate for the overall ride hailing industry contraction.
Similar to our merchants, Gojek drivers are not required to do any additional actions when it comes to GoFood orders on Tokopedia. These orders appear in our “Driver App” like any other GoFood order. But we hope the integration will increase usage and give drivers more orders to benefit from.
In summary, we believe this move is only the first step towards a new evolution of how we continue to deliver our mission as a company, which is aligned with two of our company values to “empower the small” and “put customers first”.
And like what I always say to my team “where else can you wake up in the morning every day and think “today i am going to figuratively and literally help feed millions of people.”
This is the real magic of GoFood (Gojek and GoTo) and we are privileged to do this every day.
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