Phung Tuan Duc, General Manager of Gojek Vietnam

Gojek, a pioneer of the super app model, connects over 190 million users with more than two million driver partners and 900,000 merchant partners across many Southeast Asian cities.

In Vietnam, Gojek currently offers ride-hailing (GoRide), food delivery (GoFood) and courier (GoSend) services, serving millions of users in Ha Noi and HCM City. Through the Gojek platform, more than 150,000 driver partners and 80,000 merchants also have access to additional earning opportunities.

Viet Nam News recently spoke to the General Manager of Gojek Vietnam, Phung Tuan Duc, about his experience in digital transformation and the use of technology, including big data.

Gojek, a pioneer of the super app model, connects over 190 million users with more than two million driver partners and 900,000 merchant partners across many Southeast Asian cities.

In Vietnam, Gojek currently offers ride-hailing (GoRide), food delivery (GoFood) and courier (GoSend) services, serving millions of users in Ha Noi and HCM City. Through the Gojek platform, more than 150,000 driver partners and 80,000 merchants also have access to additional earning opportunities.

Viet Nam News recently spoke to the General Manager of Gojek Vietnam, Phung Tuan Duc, about his experience in digital transformation and the use of technology, including big data.

In the era of Industry 4.0, digital trans­formation is seen as the key to success. How important is digital transforma­tion to the growth of your business?

Big data is the key to the success of many leading tech companies such as Google, Facebook, Amazon and more. By leveraging data to understand user habits, companies can design more targeted business and marketing strategies. These insights also inform future product design.

For example, 35 per cent of Amazon’s sales come from products that are recommended based on a user’s purchase and browsing his­tory, a process made possible through the use of artificial intelligence. In fact, Amazon is not the only company that is growing rapidly thanks to big data. In Fortune’s “100 Fast­est-Growing Companies” list this year, five out of the top 10 companies operate through digital platforms and use big data to develop their businesses.

However, as the volume of data increases exponentially, many companies are finding themselves lost in a ‘sea’ of data. What’s needed is a way to convert that data into ac­tionable insights that drive the business.

At a tech company like Gojek, we process hundreds of transactions per second, which allows us to gather a huge amount of data. In my opinion, data is the key to Gojek's com­petitiveness. By leveraging data, we are able to better understand consumers’ preferences and buying habits. This in turn enables us to develop products that are truly innovative and relevant to user needs as well as the ap­propriate advertising strategies.

How has Gojek utilised big data to turn it into a source of growth?

Big data is an immense resource, and the question is how we can convert this data into business growth. Data is everywhere, but a thorough understanding of the customer, which we call ‘insight’, is what truly makes a difference. Finding the right insight requires businesses to analyse data thoroughly.

Gojek is using a ‘reverse’ process, where we start with a business problem to determine what data is needed, before establishing a strategy to solve that specific problem. To do this, we consider data mining a ‘team sport’ instead of responsibility of a specific depart­ment in the company.

It is also important to find a way for every­one in the company to understand and use a common technical language when commu­nicating with one another. This will enable everyone to use data effectively in their daily work.

At Gojek, the heads of all departments, including engineering, product, sales, opera­tions and finance, come together to agree on key business issues in a specific period. Each department will then send representatives to join a rapid response team called SWAT, which focuses on processing the data and finding effective solutions to the issues raised.

‘It's Data or Nothing’ is the strategy that guides all our activities at Gojek. We use data in every aspect of our business to make centralised decisions. This means that any problem that needs to be solved is handled concurrently by all departments, instead of separately by different departments.

Gojek has also set up a platform for teams to share updates on a project’s progress in real time, which helps everyone to save time and increase efficiency. With this smooth and seamless internal process, we are able to test innovations on a smaller scale internally and measure its impact on the business, before scaling it on a larger level.

Millions of orders are processed through the Gojek platform everyday

You mentioned the concept of customer ‘insight’. Can you tell us more about this?

Gojek has a large and constant growing ecosystem of users, driver and merchant partners, so our survival and growth depends greatly on the value that our brand can bring to this ecosystem.

Millions of orders are processed through the Gojek platform everyday, which enables us to gather a huge amount of data on cus­tomers’ transactions and behaviour. We then transform this raw data into knowledge and insights on customers.

With these insights as a base, we use technology to make business decisions and support our users and partners in the most effective way. For example, AI technology helps us to understand users' behaviour and give them better recommendations based on their order history, which in turn enhances the user experience. Similarly, through the use of algorithms, we are able to efficiently match drivers with passengers, even during peak hours. This ensures users do not have to wait for too long, while optimising income for our driver partners. Gojek has also built a system to allocate the most suitable incentives like bonuses and coupons to partners and custom­ers, which helps to increase income for our partners and encourage the use of the app among customers.

What can startups in Vietnam learn from Gojek's success?

Gojek is one of the first unicorns in South­east Asia, and we’re grateful to have the sup­port of many established companies such as Google, Tencent, Mitsubishi, Visa, Facebook and Paypal to name a few..

Personally, I think Gojek's strength lies in how we always focus on solving problems for our users. Every product and feature that we launch is built to meet a specific user need.

For many startups, using technology to cre­ate new products is often an exciting process. However, it is also important to ensure that the focus of what this technology can do for users. Technology must bring about new and better experiences for users in order for the product to be a success.

At Gojek, we are constantly looking at ways to use technology to improve our prod­uct, so that we can optimise their experience while reaching out to new users. Ultimately, growth in any member of our ecosystem will have a positive impact on the other two. For example, growth in the number of drivers will give customers access to a larger pool of drivers, leading to faster pick-up times. Likewise, the more restaurants we have on our platform, the more options our customers have. — VNS