Gojek started as a motorcycle taxi call center — the manual model hid a $10B super-app

Gojek was founded in 2010 by Nadiem Makarim, Kevin Aluwi, and Michaelangelo Moran in Jakarta, Indonesia. Nadiem was a Harvard Business School graduate and former McKinsey consultant. He had been a regular user of ojek (motorcycle taxi) services and saw the inefficiency: drivers waited on street corners, and customers had to walk to find them. The solution was a phone-based call center that connected customers with drivers.

The call center model was manual and slow. Customers called a hotline, waited on hold, and a dispatcher contacted a nearby driver by phone. The model worked but was inefficient. It could not scale beyond a few hundred drivers. The founders were running a logistics company disguised as a call center. The business was limited by the manual model.

In January 2015, Gojek launched a mobile app. The app transformed the business. Customers could book rides instantly, track drivers in real time, and pay with cash or credit. The app model was scalable. Gojek expanded from ride-hailing into food delivery, payments, logistics, and entertainment. The company became a super-app with over 20 services.

Gojek became Indonesia's first unicorn and later its first decacorn (valuation over $10 billion). In 2021, Gojek merged with Tokopedia to form GoTo Group, the largest tech company in Indonesia. The founders who started with a manual call center had built a company that reshaped transportation, commerce, and payments in Southeast Asia. Nadiem Makarim went on to become Indonesia's Minister of Education.