Indonesia’s Go-Jek acquires another Indian startup
One of Indonesia’s biggest bike-taxi aggregators Go-Jek has acquired Pune-based Leftshift, a mobile application developer specialized in designing and engineering mobile applications. Earlier this year, the Indonesian unicorn acquired Bangalore-based Pianta.
This acquisition is aimed at strengthening and upscaling Go-Jek’s product development, design and engineering platforms to support its Indonesia operations. In August 2016, Go-Jek raised $550 million led by KKR and Warburg Pincus LLC, the largest ever for any Indonesian technology start-up. Following the deal, the start-up was valued at over $1.3 billion competing against the likes of Uber and Grab.
Following the acquisition, Leftshift will completely assimilate into Go-Jek’s India arm, Go-Jek Engineering India, with its operations and 42 staff members also relocating from Pune to Go-Jek’s India headquarters in Bangalore. “Our partnership with Leftshift over the last one year has been an amazing experience – they are arguably among the best mobile app developers in the country. We look forward to their immensely capable team becoming a part of the Go-Jek family,” said Sidu Ponnappa, Managing Director, Go-Jek Engineering India.
Founded in 2007 by Sudhanshu Raheja and Abhinit Tiwari, Leftshift has become a mobile development powerhouse – designing and engineering over 200 user-friendly apps for a number of well-known start-ups and large companies such as Craftsvilla, Practo, Byju’s, NH7, CitrusPay, PepperTap, Airtel and Emerson. Commenting on the development, Sudhanshu Raheja, founder and CEO, Leftshift said, “The opportunities and challenges at GO-JEK are beyond thrilling. Being fully aware of its operations, we immediately knew that our resources and technology would certainly complement and accelerate product development at GO-JEK. Moreover, the fact that our work would help millions of GO-JEK mobile app users in Indonesia is something we are very excited about as well.”