Indonesian super app Gojek has raised around $300 million in a fresh funding round despite being in the middle of merger talks, media reports said. The funds have been raised from Telkomsel, a unit of Indonesia’s largest telecom operator Telkom. Last year in November, Telkomsel injected $150 million in Gojek.
Telkomsel chief executive Setyanto Hantoro in a statement, “Telkomsel is optimistic that this latest investment will open more opportunities for society to access advanced digital technology-based innovations developed by homegrown companies.”
Reportedly, Gojek is in talks with ecommerce firm Tokopedia to merge their business. If talks are successful, the new entity would be called GoTo and the deal could be worth $18 billion.
So far, Gojek has raised around $3.45 billion in separate funding rounds from high-profile investors including Google, Facebook, PayPal, Visa, and Tencent. With the latest funding, Telkomsel is also expected to be one of the largest investors in GoTo.
In December, it was reported that Southeast Asia’s ride-hailing giant Grab and Gojek are on the brink of a potential merger and investors of both parties are urging the startups to merge. Grab’s founder and chief executive, Anthony Tan reportedly emailed his employees to say that Grab was in a position to acquire.
Speculations about a potential merger began even earlier. In March 2020, it was reported that Gojek wanted a 50 percent stake in the merged entity; however, Grab wanted to hold a controlling stake.