Gojek Introduces "Gojek Xcelerate" Program, Aiming for the Early Stage Startups

Gojek and Digitaraya have launched an accelerator program named Gojek Xcelerate. The name implies the objective to support Indonesia's startups to level up from the early stage.

Aside from Digitaraya, Gojek also supported by Google Developer Launchpad, UBS, and McKinsey & Company. Each company has contributed to this accelerator program.

In the pers conference at Digitaraya tower on Tuesday (9/10) this afternoon, the accelerator program aims for 20 startups in 4 batch within the next 6 months. The first one is to held from 10 - 27 September 2019.

Digitaraya's Managing Director, Nicole Yap emphasized on the startup they're going to invest must be a running business, even though a small one. "We're currently focused on the early-stage startups," she said.

She also mentioned the gap between the rising number of startups and the low rate of funding. It is the main issue we've tried to solve through this accelerator program.

Gojek's SVP of Product Management, Dian Rosanti said, their team has done some mentoring and training to startups.  However, they believe it's not enough to hold the accelerator program alone, therefore they have Digitaraya.

In this program, Gojek Xcelerate has set the curriculum with partners. It is said to include all subjects from growth hacking, machine learning, data science, the right business model for startup, and how to calculate business valuation.

Participants will get the opportunity for a consulting session with the experts in the global tech industry. Gojek also mentioned that startups with a related solution will have space in their ecosystem.

"Therefore, we provide opportunities for those in our program to create a solution for Gojek partners and consumers to step into the ecosystem," Dian said.

Indonesia is said to have great potential for startup expansion. It was shown at Google and Temasek research that Indonesia's projected to contribute at US$100 billion or Rp1,400 trillion in the SEA economy by 2025. There are 46 of the 847 registered startups have raised funding worth of Rp57 trillion.

–Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian