News is out that Gojek has raised an additional US$1.2 billion in its ongoing Series F funding round. Many are curious who would be investing in this tough climate? And after this round, who are the largest shareholders?
Who are the new investors of GoJek?
According to government filing, GoJek has issued additional shares in four rounds since the beginning of 2019. Among these Series O and N shares (about 3.7% of total shares outstanding) are issued to the team, including Nadiem Makarim, Kevin & Setiawan Aluwi, as well as Andre Soelistyo.
Note that the ‘series’ here in the government filing is different from the Series F mentioned at the beginning of the article. For the sake of consistency, we will be using the government filing series.
Series M, which is believed to have been completed last year, saw 19 investors joining. They include three individuals, five offshore holding companies, as well as existing shareholders Google, Tencent, JD, Astra, GIC, Clouse SA, Hera Capital, and Green Track Ventures.
New shareholders are Allianz, Siam Commercial Bank and Mitsubishi.
Series P, the most recent round (and probably the US$1.2 billion round), is apparently led by VISA (2.35% of total shares), with the participation of AIA, Cool Japan Fund, Saudi-owned Derayah Asia VC, Mitsubishi (through 3 different entities), Unilever, Blue Bird, Germany-based Key Partner Capital and Korea-based ASEAN Platform Fund.
The investments of VISA, Siam Commercial Bank, Mitsubishi, Blue Bird and AIA have already been reported by the media.
It is worth noting that VISA has now backed both Grab and GoJek, while many counterparts of Mitsubishi, including Toyota, Honda, Yamaha, Hyundai and Kymco (which account for most of the cars and motorcycles in Southeast Asia), are backing Grab. MUFG, a Mitsubishi-related financial group, has recently invested more than US$700 million in Grab.
It is also worth noting that most of GoJek’s new investors are strategic rather than financial.
Who are the biggest shareholders of GoJek?
So after the latest round, the top 10 shareholders own about 49% of the total equity; while the top 20 own more than 72%.
These are the biggest shareholders of GoJek:
- GIC (7.29%)A sovereign wealth fund established by the Government of Singapore to manage Singapore’s foreign reserves. Its AUM is estimated to be above US$400 billion.
- Google (6.4%)
I do not think any introduction is needed. They own the search engine as well as Android. - KKR (5.14%)
American global investment firm that manages multiple alternative asset classes, including private equity. It led the US$550m mega round in GoJek with Warburg Pincus back in 2016. - Tencent (5.02%)
Chinese internet giant listed on Hong Kong stock exchange. Tencent is the owner of WeChat and many gaming companies. It also backs Meituan Dianping & JD, two other investors of GoJek. - Sequoia India (4.95%)
Sequoia is an early backer of GoJek. Legend goes that they convinced Nadiem to convert GoJek from a booking service into a mobile internet company. Sequoia participated in five rounds of funding. - Warburg Pincus (4.73%)
New York-based private equity firm focused on growth investing. Warburg Pincus co-led the US$550m mega round in GoJek with KKR in 2016. - Astra (4.13%)
Indonesian conglomerate which is Southeast’s largest independent automotive group. They distribute Toyota cars and Honda motorcycles. Revenue in 2018 reached US$18 billion with net income of US$1.5 billion. - Golden Signal Limited (3.95%)
- London Residential (3.88%)
- Nadiem Makarim (3.46%)
Nadiem is the founder and former CEO of GoJek. He is currently serving as the Minister for Education and Culture of Indonesia.
Who are the Indonesian/Chinese investors?
While there are many Indonesian companies (“PT”s) on GoJek’s cap table. The notable strategic investors include Astra, Blue Bird, Blibli, Alfamart and Sampoerna.
Blue Bird is the largest taxi operator of Indonesia that was badly impacted during the surge of ride hailing; Blibli, owned by Djarum Group, is a major ecommerce platform; Alfamart is one of the two major franchise of convenience stores in Indonesia, with more than 10k outlets across the archipelago; Sampoerna family sold their tobacco business to Philip Morris for US$5.2 billion in 2005.
Northstar, an early backer of GoJek, seems to have exited most of their holdings, leaving only 0.03%.
In addition to Tencent mentioned above, JD and Meituan Dianping are the most prominent Chinese strategic investors. JD participated in series I and series M, owning about 1.88% of GoJek as of now, while Meituan Dianping only contributed to series I, owning 1.06%.
We believe that many of the BVI or Cayman vehicles on the cap table are actually controlled by Chinese shareholders, and GoJek shareholders such as GF International pooled together other Chinese investors.
Other notable shareholders
On the cap table of GoJek you can also find three Temasek-linked entities: Anderson Investment, SeaTown and Pavilion, collectively owning about 3% of GoJek. It is worth noting that Vertex Holdings, a VC arm of Temasek, was the series A lead investor of Grab.
Singapore’s EDBI is also a shareholder of GoJek, though only owning a modest 0.21%. BlackRock joined series I, owning 0.39%.
The GoJek team, including Nadiem Makarim, collectively owns 4.54%, while Coins.ph team owns 0.11%. The company also keeps about 1% of its shares in the treasury.