Traveloka May Have Acquired Rival Pegipegi Earlier This Year

In January 2018, Recruit Holdings Japan, the parent company of Pegipegi (Indonesia), Mytour (Vietnam) and TravelBook (Philippines) released the three companies to Singapore-based shell company Jet Tech Innovation Ventures Pte Ltd (Jet Tech). After being traced, Jet Tech turned out to be related to Traveloka, one of the leading OTA startups in Southeast Asia.

Recruit Holdings decided to sell its online travel business due to the competitive market of OTA businesses in the region. They refocused on their core business, namely developing workforce SaaS products. The company recently acquired Glassdoor, America's leading job search portal.

Menurut 'Change Notice' from Recruit Holdings, the three companies were sold for $66,8 million (over 900 billion rupiah). In this information, Hendrik Susanto is listed as the Director of Jet Tech. This is the first hint of the relationship between Jet Tech and Traveloka.

Susanto currently serves as Traveloka's Chief Strategy and Investment Officer. Prior to joining Traveloka in September 2017, he worked in the investment management business for more than 20 years. His last position was CEO of Ancora Capital Management.

Jet Tech was founded in mid 2017. It is not a surprise when we learn that Jet Tech and Traveloka Pte Ltd are located at the same address in Singapore.

A quick search on LinkedIn reveals that Jet Tech's "employees" include Kevin Sandjaja and Serlina Wijaya. Both of them now serve as leaders of Pegipegi, namely as CEO and Head of Marketing, respectively. Previously, they worked for Traveloka, Kevin as Product Manager while Serlina was part of the Marketing and Analytics team.

In the ranks of Mytour Vietnam officials, we found at least two Traveloka employees in the team. One person leads the Marketing team, while the other serves as a Technology Consultant.

As the leading OTA platform in the region, Traveloka is now available in 6 Southeast Asian countries. The company is reportedly in exploratory funding of $400 million (approximately 6 trillion Rupiah) from Singapore's GIC with a valuation of $4 billion (60 trillion Rupiah).

Not long ago, the former CTO and Co-founder of the company Derianto Kusuma, decide to leave to build a different business.

Menurut OTA survey from DailySocial (2018), Traveloka is the most popular OTA service in Indonesia, while Pegipegi is the 3rd most popular. In 2016, Pegipegi's net sales reached more than 424 billion rupiah.