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nited States-based ride-hailing giant Uber Technologies Inc. has reiterated its interest in expanding in Indonesia, where it faces tight competition with local rival Go-Jek and Singapore-based Grab, as well as in the rest of Southeast Asia.

Uber announced on Wednesday the appointment of Monika Rudijono, the former president director of advertising and marketing agency Grey Group Indonesia, as head of its local operation, replacing an interim chief. Monika is Uber’s first Indonesian president.

Uber Southeast Asia general manager Chan Park said the move signaled that the company was leaning toward the Indonesian market and intended to add investment to tap into fresh opportunities there.

“We are absolutely in investment mode, and Indonesia is a big part of it,” he told The Jakarta Post in an interview on Wednesday.

Uber, which is currently valued at an estimated US$70 billion, was looking to offer its services in more Indonesian cities next year, Park added.

The tech giant offers its services in more cities in Indonesia than in any other country, Park claimed the firm started the year with operations in nine cities and is ending with 34 cities on seven islands.

Southeast Asia remained one of Uber’s biggest investment destinations, Park assured, clarifying a recent statement by its new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, that its operations in the region were not profitable, as the market was “over-capitalized at this point.”

“[Southeast Asia] has been [one of the top regions where Uber invests], and it will remain so in 2018. So, we continue to invest aggressively, because we just believe that we cannot be a worldwide mobility option without serving billions of people in Asia,” Park said.

Uber has been reviewing its operations in Asia after notifying US authorities about payments made by staff to police officers in Indonesia, a person familiar with issue said in September, Reuters reported.

Indonesia, home to more than 250 million people, is tipped to account for more than half of the revenue of ride-hailing services across Southeast Asia totaling $13.1 billion by 2025, which would be up from $2.5 billion in 2015, according to a study produced by US tech giant Google and Temasek Holdings Pte last year.

Ride-hailing services are increasingly popular in big cities, with surging demand for mobility, particularly in the country’s capital Jakarta, where car drivers find themselves stuck in gridlock for almost 90 minutes a day because of heavy traffic and difficult parking, or around 22 days a year, according to an Uber survey from this year.

However, competition may get tougher in a market where rivals Go-Jek, backed by China’s Tencent, and Grab, backed by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank and China’s Didi Chuxing, are also pouring in a lot of cash. The government recently set minimum and maximum fares for ride-hailing services.

SoftBank, along with Dragoneer and General Atlantic, are expected to invest at least $1 billion in Uber and purchase up to $6 billion worth of Uber shares from existing investors.

Park said the investment deal was not closed yet, but added that it would be “certainly a vote of confidence from the biggest and most influential investors in the world.”

He added that in Indonesia, investment would be put into products and processes to improve customer safety next year.

This year, Uber introduced several new safety features, including face identification technology to recognize drivers and verify their registration in the app.