TECH START-UPS
MATTHEW BUCKLAND: Jakarta shows how to think outside the Silicon Valley box
Indonesian ride-hailing firm Go-Jek teaches us that the great local start-ups of the future will be those that solve real local problems
It is said that Jakartans spend 10 years of their lives in traffic. The populous Indonesian capital city is a sweaty, gridlocked cacophony of just about every type of vehicle you can think of. It’s a problem that has been tackled by the region’s tech entrepreneurs. To this end, two tech unicorns dominate the ride-hailing market. Go-Jek and Singapore’s Grab are the Ubers of the region. Both have been so successful that they brought the worldwide ride-hailing leader, Uber, to its knees, forcing the San Francisco company to bow out as a stand-alone company during the first half of 2018. This is no small deal. Indonesia, with 260-million people, is the fourth most populous country. The Southeast Asia region where Uber waved the white flag (by closing shop and taking a minority stake in rival Grab) is a market of 620-million people. In this tale is a lesson for tech entrepreneurs in SA. One of the biggest criticisms of tech start-ups is that they create businesses with a "Silicon Valley ...
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