The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically changed the way people around the world go about their daily lives. People are living differently and behaviors are shifting to adapt to the challenging situation brought by the virus.
Indonesians are no exception. A survey by Nielsen released in April 2020 revealed that more Indonesians had opted to stay at home to protect themselves and their inner circle from the coronavirus outbreak, with 50 percent of consumers reducing out-of-home entertainment and 46 percent reducing eating out.
Furthermore, the survey revealed that consumers have shifted the spending they previously allocated for out-of-home leisure activities to products and services they need to go about their daily lives at home. For instance, 49 percent of the consumers said they cook at home more often, driving the sales growth of staple goods and fresh products.
Facilitating Indonesians’ adaptability to the new circumstances through technology, Southeast Asia’s leading super app Gojek stays ahead in providing innovative solutions to make life easier and help consumers to stay productive at home.
Gojek does its bit by preparing solutions that can help individuals be more productive, while also constantly adapting its ecosystem to people’s new ways of living where hygiene, health and safety are more important than ever.
"Since the beginning of the pandemic, Gojek has provided a variety of solutions and innovations to encourage users to remain productive. The habits of maintaining physical distance, health and hygiene have also become part of people's new lifestyle. Gojek has raised all service standards according to users’ new habits,” Gojek chief of corporate affairs Nila Marita said.
Gojek strives to cover all aspects of consumers’ needs to remove daily frictions from their lives amid the coronavirus outbreak, highlighting several services: food delivery and grocery services, digital payment and donation platforms, entertainment and productivity tools as well as logistics.
First and foremost, of course, are food and food-related services. Delivery of these items has become vital during the pandemic as people are staying at home longer.
Early in the pandemic, Gojek came up with several innovations: contactless delivery for its GoFood, GoMart and GoShop services to prevent virus transmission, as well as collaborating with the Agriculture Ministry to source basic consumer necessities from the Mitra Tani Market.
GoFood, meanwhile, is particularly proud of its ready-to-cook food menu, launched in April 2020, giving homebodies who need to cook in a hurry, fresh and easily processed food items.
Market responses to the innovation have attested to the new feature’s pertinence to people’s lives. Within a month of its launch, purchases on the GoFood platform increased threefold. The number of ready-to-cook food items sold has also increased nearly threefold since the new feature was introduced to the public.
GoFood has also observed a positive new trend: With increased awareness about the importance of staying healthy in light of the coronavirus threat, more people than ever have been ordering healthy food and drink items, such as spice ginger, fruit juices that are high in vitamin content, coconut water and many more.
GoMart has recorded a threefold increase in its transactions during the pandemic so far, while the number of products purchased has also increased 4.6 times.
The dramatic increase was recorded from March to May 2020, compared to the number of orders received between December 2019 and February 2020, before Indonesia announced its first COVID-19 cases. The most popular products on GoMart include instant noodles, bread and milk.
Cashless transactions using e-money and digital wallets are also highly recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) to prevent virus transmission through cash bills. Indonesians’ adherence to this advice explains why Gojek’s digital wallet GoPay has recorded a fourfold increase in its balances during this year’s Ramadan period compared to the same period last year.
Not only that, people’s recent use of GoPay has gone beyond grocery transactions: they have also begun to use it for their investment activities. People’s transactions using GoPay for mutual fund investments have increased twofold.
Apparently, people also use GoPay to have fun: there has been a threefold increase in people’s use of GoPay to purchase game coupons, with Free Fire, Mobile Legends and PUBG Mobile among the most popular games based on the top-up payments completed using GoPay.
Gojek has also catered to people’s increased need for online medical consultation, seen in the 103 percent increase of transactions using GoPay on the Halodoc medical consultation app compared to the amount of transactions completed before the pandemic.
More people have also been using GoPay to complete their digital donations through Gopay donation partners, comprising fundraising sites, houses of worship and foundations. The amount of digital alms paid through Gojek has doubled, while people have also been purchasing tickets to digital charity concerts through Gojek.
The overall amount of donations channeled using GoPay reached Rp 45 billion, a twofold increase in the March-May 2020 period prior to the pandemic. Meanwhile, appreciation for driver partners through tips at the end of the service reached Rp 77.6 billion, which doubled during the pandemic.
In the entertainment realm, users of Gojek’s GoGames have increased their game sessions by 64 times, a dramatic increase indeed, with Bubble Woods and Cake Sliders the top favorites. Similarly, GoTix has also recorded an increase in online events ticket sales by 32 times, including webinars and online concerts among the most in-demand event types.
GoPlay has also seen viewership increase tenfold, with horror, thriller and romantic comedy being favorite genres.
GoSend shipping services, meanwhile, have seen orders doubling during the pandemic, especially during Ramadan, with more than 80 percent of transactions on GoSend being for food and drink deliveries.
With active delivery hours shifted to 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. during Ramadan from its previous 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. slot, 85 percent of consumers relied on GoSend instant services, done within one to two hours to send their packages during Ramadan.
With all this, GoSend has covered 70 million kilometers in all its services, equal to moving 1,750 times around the world.
Asaelia, a 22-year-old professional working for a non-governmental organization, is among so many Gojek users who feel that the super app has been really helpful during her three-month stay-at-home period with her family in South Tangerang amid the coronavirus outbreak.
“Starting at the beginning of the pandemic and even until now, I’ve been very worried about visiting restaurants and cafés; this is where the GoFood application is very helpful. Sometimes I get bored with the food cooked at home so I will order something using GoFood. I use the application three times a week to order food, fried chicken being my favorite item. Some of my friends also run restaurants and cafés so I also order their food and beverages to support their businesses,” Asaelia said.
She added that GoFood also helped her satisfy her sudden cravings for certain types of food. “One night all of a sudden I craved martabak manis (Indonesian-style sweet pancake) so I used the application to order it,” she said.
Asaelia, who loves baking in her spare time, also said she had been using GoSend to show her friends some love by sending them some of the cakes she had baked.
She said she found the GoPay e-wallet highly convenient for her to complete her transactions, and that it saves the hassle of having to keep extra change, among other things.
Meanwhile, she said the GoTix feature helped her purchase various online concert tickets very easily.
“I recently purchased tickets to the online concert of Indonesian jazz musicians Indra Lesmana and Eva Celia; I was given a link that would lead me to a barcode. I could just pay using the money in my e-wallet by hovering over the barcode; it was easy like that, no need to open my mobile banking account to transfer the money to a bank account before sending the receipt via email as proof,” she explained.
These diverse solutions and innovations have solidified Gojek’s position as the reliable super app for people to remain productive and meet their daily needs amid the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Nila.
“As we resume our activities outside home again, Gojek will continue to innovate in its various services by prioritizing safety, health and hygiene. We believe Gojek will remain a community mainstay in carrying out daily activities with a new lifestyle. We believe that together with Gojek, there is a way to be productive and undergo the transition period well," Nila concluded.
So, #ThereIsAlwaysAWay to stay productive and weather this pandemic storm together with Gojek.
