Complementary Competition "Super App" Gojek and Grab Keep Going

Amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, Gojek and Grab keep innovating to be great app front. Starting from Gojek, the company added partnerships with third parties for features edutech (with Zenius) and online gold investment GoInvestasi (with Pluang).

Both of these services are officially present in the application Gojek in the form of shuffle cards.

It should be noted, these two companies have an attachment to Gojek. Zenius is now led by Rohan Monga, previously served as COO Gojek. He participated in pioneering Gojek in the initial phase to get the status decacorn.

Meanwhile, Pluang is one of the portfolios of Go-Ventures, a venture capital unit owned by Gojek. This startup, which was formerly called EmasDigi, won Series A investasi investment worth $3 million in September 2019.

In an official statement, Head of Third Party Platform Gojek Sony Radhityo said, "The solution is right on target Gojek give always departs from the problems that exist in the daily life of users. [...] The presence of tele-education services is one of our efforts to ensure that the nation's children remain productive and can study independently comfortably at home."

Zenius opens its access to 80 learning videos and practice questions for grades 1-12, live teaching and live chat tutored tutors, and daily study plans.

Next, GoInvestasi provides online gold investment buying and selling transactions. The purchase price starts from 0,01 grams or the equivalent of Rp. 8 thousand. The currently available payment method is GoPay.

Pluang guarantees that all transactions are guaranteed in accordance with applicable regulations. The company has obtained a license from CoFTRA, the gold is distributed by PT PG Berjangka and stored in PT Kliring Berjangka Indonesia (KBI). Also, it has been certified by MUI to guarantee transactions according to sharia contracts.

GoInvestasi also provides charts of buying and selling gold prices online real-time to provide a more marketable picture to users.

Before releasing both features, Gojek have introduced GoSure (PasarPolis), GoGive (Kitabisa), GoGames (Google's experimental division 'Area 120'), GoNews (Google News and Kumparan), GoMall (Blibli and JD.id), GoMed (Halodoc), and GoFitness (Doogether).

Separately, in a previous interview, Sony gave an example of GoSure being none other than being present because the literacy index of insurance products in Indonesia is only 12,1% according to the survey results from the OJK. This means that almost 90% of Indonesians have not been covered by insurance.

In fact, protection against a potential loss needs to be invested to protect the public from risks to themselves, their property, and business activities.

Grab instead choose to focus on an existing vertical

In the midst of the ramps of transportation services due to the implementation of physical distancing, Grab instead see it is an opportunity to increase the demand for delivery of food, goods, and daily necessities. They released GrabMart and GrabAssistant and will expand to more countries in the coming weeks.

"Covid-19 has had a major impact on financial uncertainty for driver-partners, delivery partners and merchant. Our top priority is ensuring the safety and survival of every individual who joins the platform Grab," said the Co-Founder and Group CEO Grab Anthony Tan in an official statement, Monday (30/3).

GrabThe Mart serves the purchase of necessities, be it packaged food, drinks, personal care items and homes sold by partners merchant. This service is a little different GrabFresh, which provides purchases of fresh products such as vegetables, fruit, and others at supermarkets.

GrabMart is a daily necessities delivery service. Customers can purchase packaged food, beverages, personal care items and more from supermarkets, convenience stores and pharmacies through the app Grab and send it to the customer.

Meanwhile, GrabAssistant is a service concierge-on-demand, customers can ask for the help of delivery partners to deal with urgent needs or buy products at stores that are not listed in Grabmart.

GrabMart itself is available in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand. Will expand to more cities and countries including Philippines, Myanmar, and Cambodia. Likewise for GrabAssistant, coming soon to the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam.

On his way to becoming great app, Grab enrich its vertical by attracting various partners. There's HappyFresh (Grabfresh), GoodDoctor (GrabHealth), Sejasa (Clean & Fix), Agoda, Booking.com, and Oyo (Hotels), Hooq (Video), and BookMyShow (Tickets).

Some of these partners came because they were invested by and/or investors from Grab, as well as entry into the accelerator program Grab that is Grab Velocity Ventures.

Retain loyal customers

As is often explained, the true ambition to be achieved from the strategy great app is how to make customers keep coming back to use the services of an application because it suits their needs.

The digital business competition map, especially with application-based products, is now getting tougher and vulnerable to risk churn. In the report MoEngage the latest, revealed as many as 56% of users useuninstall within seven days of downloading it. The rest, as much as 23% of applications in-uninstall within 24 hours.

A deeper analysis by Day Zero shows that 23% of users haven't opened the app since the first day they downloaded it. Also, another 15% of users useuninstall application in the same day without opening the application at all.

The analysis was conducted in India on more than three million e-commerce app users who had downloaded the app for more than 90 days. It was also explained that the competition for e-commerce applications with social media such as WhatsApp and Facebook was quite fierce.

Although social media applications are quite capacity-consuming smartphone, but generally have a level churn which is low because it has high functionality than e-commerce applications.

"Quite often people find that the application does not meet customer expectations. For some people convenience is important, but there are also those who prefer stable applications, not crash or get stuck," said MoEngage Founder and CEO Raviteja Dodda.

"Consumers are very selective about the data they share with apps. If apps keep requesting access to their social accounts or sending invites on behalf of users without consent, unistall will be much higher."

According to the App Annie State of 2020 report, users spent an average of 3 hours and 40 minutes per day last year. The average is up 35% compared to 2017.