Go-Jek, Bukalapak, Shopee: Growth Hack tricks by Giant Indonesian Startups

Growth hacking is a strategy which needs a continual collaboration between marketers, data experts, and programmers to accelerate product growth with a testable and scalable method.

The advantage of growth hack is not only to keep your product sustainable but to attract consumers by decreasing cost of user acquisition and increasing consumer retention – Low Budget with High Impact. Some startups in Indonesia like the unicorns Gojek, Bukalapak, and Shopee practise growth hack method as well to grow their business.

GOJEK

For instance, in its early days Go-Jek offered a flat fare of IDR 5.000 (~0.33 USD) for a maximum distance of 25 Km. The result was an increase in demand leading to hundreds of thousands requests everyday. Simply said, by a spending cost of IDR 5.000, Go-Jek was able to calculate customer lifetime value. Another successful method that Go-Jek implemented was a “Referral” program. It is no secret that if used effectively, referral programs present an excellent opportunity to grow users fast and easy. The high growth in user acquisition is only accelerated further by Go-Jek’s continuous development and addition to their features such as Go-Food, Go-Send, Go-Massage, Go-Box, Go-Tix, etc.

BUKALAPAK

Bukalapak too dabbled with growth hack but in their own way through SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Word of Mouth/Social Media, Virality, Sales/Agent, and Paid Advertising. An interesting comment about “virality” that Bukalapak’s CEO mentioned was that virality could make your marketing costs almost touch zero. If you think about it, it is an interesting tool that can be used by any company or product. Apart from this, Bukalapak continues to develop their features to support overall product growth, such as BukaEmas, BukaMobil, BukaReksa, Tickets, etc.

SHOPEE

As a pioneer of mobile marketplace, Shopee adopted a unique growth hack concept which was to allow sellers to import photos of products directly from their Instagram handles. This was a great move since Instagram was popular with several online sellers and this attracted them to sell their products on Shopee’s platform as well with less time and effort. The result?  Fast vendor (seller) acquisition. Furthermore, it reduced the friction or doubts that sellers may have of trying new market platform in the form of Shopee. Besides that, Shopee started a promotion of FREE DELIVERY. Have a guess – what happened next? Most online Instagram sellers organically promoted Shopee to their customers by urging them to avail Free Delivery by buying the same products via Shopee.

Start-ups must leverage the powerful potential of growth hacking to grow their user base and optimise each of the following stages: Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, and Revenue.