(Bloomberg) — GoTo Group, Indonesia’s biggest tech company, surged on its first day of trading after raising $1.1 billion in one of the world’s largest initial public offerings this year.
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The shares jumped as much as 23% and were up 14% to 386 rupiah at 9:41 a.m. in Jakarta, valuing the company at about $32 billion. GoTo sold stock in the IPO at 338 rupiah apiece.
GoTo’s listing bucks a global trend of companies scrapping or delaying IPOs because of worries about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, soaring inflation and rising interest rates. It is the third-largest offering in Indonesia after PT Bukalapak.com and PT Dayamitra Telekomunikasi, known as Mitratel.
A successful debut by GoTo, created through a merger of ride-hailing giant Gojek and e-commerce company Tokopedia, sets the tone for other regional tech giant IPOs. PT Traveloka Indonesia and and Blibli.com are among local internet companies that have been preparing to go public.
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Underscoring GoTo’s importance to the local economy and technology industry, Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo gave a short video address at the ceremony marking the debut on Monday. “I hope this GoTo IPO motivates young Indonesians to lend new energy to the technological leap in this country’s economy,” he said.
GoTo is now among the most valuable companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange along with PT Bank Central Asia, PT Bank Rakyat Indonesia and PT Telkom Indonesia at current price levels.
The company is the result of last year’s merger between Indonesia’s two most valuable internet startups — ride-hailing provider Gojek and e-commerce firm Tokopedia — to get more firepower against rivals in an increasingly cutthroat market. Over the years, the two amassed a long list of investors, including Google, Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Sequoia Capital India. The latter was an early backer of both Gojek and Tokopedia.
GoTo, a loss-making company, is among Southeast Asian consumer-internet companies that are adding users at a rapid clip but have yet to generate sustainable profit. Still, GoTo is enjoying a leadership position in Indonesia, a country of more than 270 million people whose mobile-savvy consumers are shopping on Tokopedia’s platform and ordering rides and food via Gojek’s app.
It all started in 2009, when William Tanuwijaya, the son of a factory worker, made a bet on Indonesia’s economic and internet boom and founded Tokopedia — the name is a variant of the Indonesian word for “store.” A year later, Nadiem Makarim, a Harvard Business School grad and former McKinsey & Co. consultant, set up Gojek to arrange courier deliveries in Jakarta.
GoTo Chief Executive Officer Andre Soelistyo joined Gojek in 2015 after working as an investor at private-equity firm Northstar Group, which became the first institutional backer of the upstart. He and co-founder Kevin Aluwi were named co-CEOs of the ride-hailing company in October 2019, when Makarim left to join the government as the nation’s minister for education and culture.
(Updates with comment from Indonesia’s president in fifth paragraph.)
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