Gojek Closes Down GoLife and GoFood Festival, 430 Employees are Getting Laid Off

Gojek gets another business downsizing, this time by stopping GoLife services and the GoFood Festival food program. GoLife will be effectively closed as of July 27, 2020. Previously, at the end of 2019, five official GoLife services were stopped, leaving only GoMassage and GoClean.

The number of Gojek's employees to be laid off is 430 and the company promises that this will be the only lay-off in terms of the pandemic situation.

For affected employees, Gojek delivers severance packages as follows:

1. Affected employees will receive severance pay (minimum 4-week salary) plus an additional 4-week salary for each year of work.
2. Payment of salary during the notice period. Affected employees are not required to work when they enter the notification period, but salaries are paid in full.
3. Equity arrangement. The waiting period (annual cliff) for employees who have ownership rights will be eliminated, therefore, employees who leave will immediately get company shares.
4. Payment of annual leave and other rights not used
5. Extension of health insurance for affected employees and their families until 31 December 2020.
6. Employees can continue to have laptops to help find other opportunities.
7. Extension of mental health, financial, and other consultation services over the next three months.
8. An Outplacement program that should help everyone to find a job.Closing this service will also have an impact on GoMassage and GoClean partners. Gojek promises an appreciation package for partners, in the form of cash and online training, which is expected to be used by partners to get up and look for new opportunities.

Meanwhile, the GoFood Festival was stopped because it was not in line with the concept of physical distancing during the pandemic. GoFood Festival partners can optimize the business through GoFood and Gojek's cloud kitchen initiative.

Previously, Gojek's closest competitor, Grab, had announced a reduction of around 5% for employees, 360 people, regionally.

Focus on core business

Starting as a ride-sharing application, Gojek has the ambition to be a super app, an application that is able to accommodate the various daily needs of its users. In recent years, the company has been steady with this vision and continues to offer new services, including various features in GoLife.

Currently, along with the consumers' changing habits during the pandemic, Gojek has chosen to focus on several services with larger potential to generate revenue. In addition to transportation and logistics, Gojek's focus is now on the payment platforms (GoPay), food delivery (GoFood), and health (GoMed with Halodoc).

The innovation was carried out with two strategies, as internal through independent and external development through collaboration. In order to support collaborative innovation, Gojek used the Go-Ventures investment unit, which provides a lot of funding for potential startups.

Earlier this month, Gojek announced funding from Facebook and PayPal in the Series F round. Reportedly after the funding, the company's valuation stood at $12.5 billion.

– Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian