Indonesia-based ride-hailing startup Go-Jek on Wednesday announced its acquisition of Bengaluru-based AirCTO, an Artificial Intelligence- based recruitment platform, for an undisclosed amount.
Go-Jek will use the acquisition to open its second engineering and product development center in Gurgaon, according to the company’s statement.
As part of the deal, the AirCTO team will join Go-Jek with immediate effect and will look at building products that accelerate recruitments for Go-Jek. The company has also announced the opening of a new office in Gurgaon, for which Go-Jek plans to hire 100 employees aiming to reach a headcount of 500 in India by the year-end.
Other expansion plans include more acquisitions in India, with Go-Jek actively exploring the start-up space, particularly entities with expertise in engineering, design and product management.
Go-Jekcurrently runs one of the largest JRuby, Clojure, Java and Go clusters in Asia. Its robust tech-infrastructure is built and managed by over 350 engineers, who manage operations across Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
The Indonesian company offers on-demand ordering of food, last-mile commuting, digital payments, shopping, hyper-local delivery, grocery delivery, and two dozen services on its super app. The app was first launched in January 2015 for consumers in Indonesia.Go-Jek now operates in 204 cities and regions in five Southeast Asian countries.
Go-Jek’s largest India-based product team and the company’s food delivery service, GO-FOOD, will setup product divisions in the Gurgaon office. It claims to be the largest food delivery app in Southeast Asia with over 400,000 merchants registered on the platform. Around 85% of these are small micro-entrepreneurs that rely heavily on GO-FOOD for revenue.
According to Go-Jek’s India managing director Sidu Ponnappa, the company recorded an annualized gross transaction value (GTV) of US$9 billion in 2018, primarily from transactions in Southeast Asia.
“With operations underway in Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, we will now consider whether further acquisitions are needed as we seek to bring in entrepreneurial teams who can help us further develop the multi-service business model that makes Go-Jek a leader in Southeast Asia,” said Ponnappa in a statement.
“Over the past three years, we’ve helped a range of startups and corporates source qualified candidates for critical technology roles. We were in talks with a number of other tech giants, but we found Go-Jek to be the best fit, as we share similar DNA – something that’s really important for us. We intend to use our prowess in recruitment to contribute to the hyper-growth Go-Jek is currently experiencing across Southeast Asia,” said Atif Haider, founder, AirCTO.
This article was first published on livemint.com