Once, ojek (motorcycle taxis) were considered a viable lifehack to beat Jakarta’s notorious traffic jams. However, the flipside to this seemingly convenient transportation mode was the uncertainty it brought to its consumers. Many of them, especially women, felt insecure commuting with an ojek at night.
Then in 2010, with the advent of local superapp Gojek, the face of ojek transportation changed, with reliable uniformed drivers with standardized road safety equipment and cutting edge technology that gave a sense of safety to consumers. Currently, the majority of Gojek users are women, even 55 percent of trips at night are carried out by women users.
With its increasingly diverse services, Gojek continues to innovate to ensure the safety of consumers in its ecosystem.
With this in mind, Gojek recently launched its #AmanBersamaGojek (Be Safe with Gojek) campaign on Feb. 28, which consists of a series of initiatives aimed at enhancing safety standards and user protection in Indonesia. In addition, the campaign aims to boost safety and security among all its consumers in a holistic manner, supported by two key pillars: education and protection.
As part of the safety campaign, the decacorn company launched Gojek SHIELD.
Gojek SHIELD comprises protection technologies that can secure all parties within the ecosystem from security threats, privacy breaches and possible cyberattacks, including phone number incognito mode, a chat intervention feature — a pop-up chat that warns users if there is any suspicious activity — a share my trip feature as well as an emergency button directly connected to Gojek’s emergency unit, which operates 24 hours a day to help those in urgent need, including in the event of accidents.
Thanks to an artificial intelligence system run by a world-class digital security team comprising data scientists, engineers and cybersecurity experts, Gojek SHIELD can also prevent, and take action against, all suspicious activities conducted under the Gojek platform.
One testament to its effectiveness was when Gojek used the feature to provide evidence to the police in Jakarta, Semarang in Central Java and Malang in East Java to uncover a criminal syndicate that disguised themselves using bogus orders via Gojek.
The system has also detected and suspended 120 driver partners in Singapore and also hunderds in Indonesia who use modified apps to conduct their operations.
A system is only effective with knowledgeable users. With this in mind, Gojek is partnering with the Communications and Information Ministry and Gadjah Mada University to boost digital safety in Indonesia and arm consumers with knowledge about how to protect themselves against cyber and other security threats.
Starting with six cities in Indonesia, all parties will work together to raise public awareness of the various types of online fraud and instill good cybersecurity habits through in-app games, public service announcements and seminars conducted by the university.
Gojek co-CEO Kevin Aluwi said that a sense of security among users when using Gojek services remained the homegrown app’s top priority in its ecosystem management, adding that the company would continue to invest in protecting the security and safety of all its users and partners.
“Gojek deems safety and security as top priorities which have become our collective responsibility to maintain. We have, and will continue to, invest in the development of our technology, along with various protection measures, for consumers and partners alike. We also deem our investment in public education as important for our users and partners to reap the optimum benefit from our digital technology, without being compromised by such technology,” Kevin explained.
Meanwhile, Communications and Information Ministry information application director general Semuel Abrijani Pangerapan said Indonesians’ context as digital technology users was quite unique: “despite more than 170 million Indonesians using the internet, the digital literacy of our population remains very low”.
“We appreciate that Gojek has taken concrete steps in incorporating education as a main focus in its digital literacy promotion program for a wider public, we consider Gojek as one of the digital industry players that respond quite quickly to this issue,” Semuel said.
Gojek is also continuing to strengthen its protection program, which includes preventive measures to minimize all sorts of risks. In its transportation services, for instance, Gojek provides its driver partners with various training programs to turn them into spearheads of safety measures. The training programs, among other things, include first aid actions during accidents, anti-sexual harassment and driving safety.
Specifically for its driving safety training, Gojek has also provided training to driver partners across the 17 cities where Gojek operates, including one most recently conducted on Feb. 27 in cooperation with the Transportation Ministry.
Gojek’s protection program also involves the insurance of its partners and users, covering their GoCar and GoRide trips, as well as material losses or damage for Gojek’s logistics services GoSend, along with GoLife insurance protection. Gojek also launched GoPay Money Back Guarantee for GoPay and PayLater balance. The program covers fund loss from users’ GoPay and PayLater balance due to circumstances outside of users’ control.
Gojek firmly believes that by taking comprehensive safety protection measures, it will help its users gain optimum benefit from the technology it offers. After all, safety is everyone’s responsibility.
