Logistics Startups Indonesia | Growth Stage Picks 2020

The Frontrunner

Deliveree and its popular truck booking platform have achieved front runner status amongst logistics startups in Indonesia through a combination of their large customer booking volumes, big fleet, multiple service lines, roster of blue-chip clients, and a following amongst SMEs who comprise the bulk of Indonesia’s economy. 

Customers download their mobile app from Play Store or Apples Apps Store as well as use their web application on their website. Choose your truck and book for a match with a nearby driver within a few minutes for a spot booking or scheduled pickup up several days in advance. 

With their range of 10 different truck types, Deliveree offers both long haul services as well as shorter distance intracity deliveries over a service area that includes all of Java, Bali, Lombok, and parts of Sumatra. Also, we compared their prices to other platforms and a few quotes we received. Deliveree was consistently quite cheap by comparison. 

At the time of writing, their active fleet is estimated to be approximately 30,000 commercial trucks along with smaller vehicles such as vans and pickups. Customer volumes are estimates to be 3,000 to 4,000 truck bookings per day. 

Deliveree is the only player on our list that wasn’t founded in Indonesia although they have relocated their group headquarters to Jakarta. Founded by a venture builder called Inspire Ventures, Deliveree launched in Thailand early 2015 and opened a large operation in Indonesia later that same year. Today, they operate in Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines. LinkedIn reports their total staff count to be 266 but recent news interviews have claimed their actual staff count to be much closer to 350 across their three markets for this startup logistics disruptor. 

Here’s a summary table of the facts we were able to pull together about Deliveree, first on our list of growth stage picks 2020.

How to check their price? Click cek ongkir 

What do we like the most? Their brand is popular and visible. With big monthly searches for the brand name, a large customer install base, and their green branded trucks seen buzzing all over Jakarta - Deliveree seems to be everywhere these days. 

What do we like the least? Their service area is mostly Java. It clearly should cover the whole country and we’re wondering what’s taking them so long. Startup logistics disruptors should move faster than this.

Rising Stealth Player

Kargo Technologies gained fame among logistics startups when they came out of stealth in March 2019 with funding from Travis Kalanick’s venture fund as well as Sequoia India. It’s Co-Founder, Tiger Fang, was previously an Uber executive in Southeast Asia and their other Co-Founder, Yodi Aditya, is a respected entrepreneur in the Indonesian scene. 

Kargo was a surprise for nearly everyone in the logistics startup Indonesia industry. Their flagship product is a user-friendly load board that operates under the brand Kargo. Customers can post cargo loads and receive bids from trucking vendors. We tried it and enjoyed the experience because of the flexibility. We were able to create our posting in the way we wanted by choosing our desired truck or instead just focusing on describing our cargo and allowing the bidding vendors to choose the truck for us. 

The cargo load we posted received over 7 bids within 3 hours. Some of the bids were quite high but 3 of the bids were reasonably priced and we ended up selecting one of those. Kargo’s load board is free to use, user-friendly, and they clearly have responsive vendors who are keen to do deals. We asked some of the vendors what areas they cover and it seemed that they are willing to go anywhere in the country for the right price. 

At the time of writing, we could not estimate the active fleet for this logistics startup Indonesia but it does seem like early days for them based on their 1,000+ app downloads in Play Store and their 1,900 monthly brand name searches according to Google Analytics. Nor could we estimate their new daily job postings on their load board. 

Their CS support informed us there is no fee for customers and when we asked their vendors, they told us there was also no fee. As long as this startup logistics company can afford it, we think this is a great way to accumulate market share and introduce this exciting new load board to customers and truckers. We’re excited to see Kargo grow and for their load board to become a market leader although it does seem to be early days for their brand name recognition and mobile app popularity for this startup logistics disruptor. 

LinkedIn reports their total staff count to be 156 but recent news interviews have claimed their actual staff count to be much closer to 200 in Indonesia. 

Here’s a summary table of the facts we were able to pull together about Kargo Technologies, second on our list of growth stage picks 2020.

What do we like the most? Kargo’s load board has a friendly and modern interface, the load posting experience was easy, and the bidding doesn’t suffer from slow vendor responsiveness that we’ve seen with other load boards of logistics startups. 

What do we like the least? They’re still quite new to the market and have yet to be proven. We don’t yet know much about their load board volumes and their brand name recognition is still quite low with not very many installs of their Android app.

Legacy Player Still Running Strong

While not in the same category as the other logistics startups in this article, we could not write an article about logistics technology trucking players without talking about GoBox, a wholly owned subsidiary of GoJek, the ubiquitous household name that has changed Indonesia’s consumer habits from motorbike transportation to food and now to payments. In Jakarta and the major urban centers of Indonesia, GoJek is part of Indonesian daily life and therefore is widely considered to be unstoppable and undefeatable. 

But their subsidiary GoBox is a slightly different story. It was not achieved the same massive success and uber dominant market share as GoJeks’s more popular service lines such as GoJek, GoCar, GoFood, and GoPay. Nevertheless, GoBox continues to run strong and is widely known as a “go-to” option for low cost DIY home moves and small businesses. 

Customers can download GoBox’s mobile app from Play Store or Apples Apps Store. You can choose from a range of trucks and book for a match with a nearby driver within a few minutes for an on-demand booking. They offer all distance trucking from short to long and their pickup service area is nearly all of Indonesia. 

At the time of writing, our sources within the company estimate their fleet to be very large in the range of 50,000-100,000 commercial trucks and other smaller vehicles such as vans and pickups. However, the number that are active is likely a substantially smaller figure. Volumes are estimated to be similar to Deliveree at about 3,000-4,000 truck bookings per day. Deliveree is generally considered to be have more market share in Greater Jakarta while GoBox is more dominant in secondary cities and in rural areas. 

LinkedIn reports GoJek staff to total 13,700 in Indonesia but the number who are allocated to GoBox is estimated to be under 150 for this startup logistics division of their company. 

Here’s a summary table of the facts we were able to pull together about GoBox, third on our list among growth stage picks.

What do we like the most? GoJek is a wonderful super app and having GoBox bundled in with all the other great services such as motorbike and car transport for passengers, food delivery, and payments is a total convenience. Also, GoBox drivers are known to quite friendly and that ads a nice touch. 

What do we like the least? While technically not a logistics startup Indonesia, GoBox is the “go-to” option for small businesses and for DIY home moves amongst our growth stage picks. However, they haven’t established themselves as an enterprise brand and haven’t dented the surface of winning bigger businesses over to their on-demand model in comparison to other logistics startups.

Who are the top growth stage picks for logistics startups in Indonesia? 

In short, it’s Deliveree, Kargo Technologies, and GoBox. This article covers in-depth the 30% problem and the various ways disruptive logistics technology companies are trying to solve it as well as key pieces of comparative information about each of the logistics startups on our list. 

Which logistics startup Indonesia has the largest user base among our growth stage picks? 

For pure play logistics users, GoBox and Deliveree are closely matched. While GoBox is technically not a logistics startup Indonesia anymore, we’ll count them in for this answer anyways. GoBox’s slightly stronger national presence and the fact that their app is bundled into the massively popular GoJek super app gives them the upper hand. For this answer, we’ll go with GoBox.

July 2, 2020 by Stella Maris, Contributor

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