Serious Business "Online Grocery", Gojek Focus on GoMart for Weekly Shopping Needs

The shift in behavior due to the pandemic has made people start turning to platforms online, one of which uses an application to shop for daily needs. GoMart as a service from Gojek who plays in online groceries take advantage of the momentum by releasing a series of new features to stay relevant to the conditions.

The research from McKinsey & Company presented shows a shift in people's behavior in shopping. Nine out of ten Indonesians say they have tried a new shopping behavior and most intend to continue shopping with the new method after the pandemic is over.

The Retail Entrepreneurs Association (APRINDO) report states that there has been a 4-fold increase in transactions from online applications and shipping methods since the spread of Covid-19. A survey from PWC “Indonesia Consumer Insights” also showed that 69% of Indonesian respondents said they bought more food ingredients online after the implementation of social distancing.

From the three studies above, it strengthens GoMart's efforts to dominate the market which is assisted by a fleet of drivers Gojek. In limited interviews with a number of media, Head of Groceries Gojek Tarun Agarwal explained that GoMart was first initiated in 2019 by partnering with Alfa Group as the first partner.

At that time, the mission was to make it easier for consumers to buy daily necessities that were sudden and could be purchased online o Alfamart/Alfamidi. "Then in 2020 there was a pandemic, our focus was finally sharpened to continue to increase merchant because consumers are definitely looking for household products that they usually buy, such as vegetables that can't be found at Alfamart," he said, Wednesday (10/3).

Right when there was a pandemic, GoMart first focused on meeting weekly shopping needs by increasing the variety of merchant choices and product variations that consumers could choose from. Currently merchant GoMart is Lotte Mart, Foodhall, Sayurbox, Perum Bulog, and Best Meat to provide fresh food ingredients, and Watson to provide beauty and health products.

All of these merchants can now be enjoyed in 11 cities, including Jabodetabek, Medan, Palembang, Makassar and eight major cities in Java and Bali.

Agarwal confessed with addition merchant This, in addition to other new features, is able to boost GoMart's performance. It was stated that the transactions increased between 7-8 times in the period from February to December 2020. The addition of merchants also increased the number of items per unit (SKU item) sold at GoMart by 19 times and the number of monthly GoMart users increased by 8 times.

"We also created the EmakJago Shopping Assistant feature, which we recruited from partners Gojek to help those affected by the pandemic. We put them on location merchant, one location can have three to six people depending on the level demand. "

GoMart focus this year

Agarwal said, in the early stages, GoMart was focused on improving services so that GoMart became a reliable platform when shopping for their weekly needs. According to him, the word "reliable" really determines the experience of consumers to return to using GoMart services.

“Because they use GoMart for their weekly needs, they have to provide a good experience, the system must be reliable so that they want to use it again. While on the other hand, shopping offline that's currently a lot point bread-his."

Therefore, while adding more options merchant and products, especially those that sell fresh products, in the long term GoMart will expand merchant from grocery stores and stalls around consumers' homes. This is because both are part of micro-enterprises which are large in number and spread evenly throughout Indonesia. Hope there will be more choices merchant that consumers can choose from.

In this year, in the midst of intense competition from players online groceries On the other hand, GoMart will recruit more shopping assistants in more supermarkets, expand services to new cities, and bring new features in addition to the existing contactless delivery feature. "In the next few weeks we will launch an interesting new feature on GoMart," he concluded.