During a recent press briefing in Jakarta, Grab cofounder Hooi Ling Tan said the company planned to leverage its network of drivers and partners in over 500 Indonesian cities to expand its food delivery service.

The company will also partner with Booking Holdings Inc., the owner of online travel booking platforms Booking.com and Agoda.com, to offer services such as flight and accommodation booking.

Hooi Ling said the company’s food delivery service, GrabFood, was available in 139 Indonesian cities at present.

“Grab needs to be a Southeast Asian solution. We always knew that if we just focused on one country, Grab wouldn’t be what it is today,” she said in reference to the company’s position as the region’s leading ride-hailing company.

“For next year, we will focus on Indonesia,” she said.

Indonesia is naturally a prime market for any tech-based company as it is Southeast Asia’s largest and fastest-growing digital economy, which is estimated to triple in value to US$100 billion by 2025 from $27 billion this year, according to a recent Google report.

Indonesia’s ride-hailing market, which includes food delivery, is expected to increase to $14 billion in 2025 from $3.7 billion this year, while its online travel market is expected to increase to $25 billion from $8.6 billion.

Expansion of the two services would pit Grab face-to-face with two Indonesian unicorns: online booking platform Traveloka and ride-hailing company Go-Jek with its equivalent Go-Food delivery service.

Indonesia is also where Grab experiences the heaviest competition from Go-Jek, which commands an 80 percent market share of the domestic tech-based transportation industry, including food delivery and logistics, according to the Business Competition Supervisory Commission.

Furthermore, as of this year, Go-Jek has taken the battle into Grab territory as the company expanded into Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam and Singapore. It is also expected to start operating in Thailand soon.

Meanwhile, Traveloka, which also has operations around Southeast Asia, holds over 50 percent of all Indonesian online travel-related purchases, according to a recent Dailysocial.id survey.

Grab, which entered Indonesia in 2014, has been expanding its driver network such that it now claims a 60 percent market share of all two-wheeled and 70 percent of four-wheeled app-based bookings, although Go-Jek dominates the overall tech-based transportation service industry.

Grab Indonesia managing director Ridzki Kramadibatra said the logical next step was to diversify the company’s services — becoming an “everyday super-app” — by catering to the daily needs of average urban-dwelling Indonesians, such as commuting, ordering food, shopping and sending packages.

As such, the company launched its GrabFood delivery service in 2016 and package delivery service GrabExpress in 2015 with considerable success. Grab currently has six submarkets.

Go-Jek, meanwhile, launched Go-Food in 2015 and packaged delivery service Go-Send in 2017. Go-Jek has operations in up to 21 sub-markets, including ultra-niche ones, such as on-demand beauty services and masseuses. Earlier this year, it launched its coupon marketplace Go-Deal.

Ridzki acknowledged that Grab was late into the food delivery game as it wanted to build an expansive transportation network before diversifying services. He said the new programs were expected to double overall revenue to $2 billion next year.

Hooi Ling added that Grab also planned to work with Chinese health service platform Ping-An Good Doctor to offer, among other things, pharmaceutical delivery and doctor appointment bookings in Indonesia next year. (nor)

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