GoJek’s digital journey to becoming one of Indonesia’s biggest multi-platform apps

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Mar 29, 2023

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ANECDOTE

Debugging on the Pavement

During a major production downtime, Sartaj and a colleague debugged the issue from the pavement outside their office.
Bangalore traffic prevented them from reaching home quickly, demonstrating their dedication.

ANECDOTE

Early Gojek Hustle

Gojek's early days were marked by a "hustle culture" where everyone did everything.
Even the CTO was found fixing the office router, highlighting the hands-on approach.

INSIGHT

Moving Beyond Hero Culture

Gojek shifted from a "hero culture" to a structured approach with clear responsibilities and systems.
This move helped Gojek thrive and scale by distributing responsibility instead of relying on individuals.

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In this special episode, we are featuring That Digital Show. Theo Davies and Stephanie Wong speak to Sartaj Singh, Head of Technology at GoJek, who shares inside knowledge on GoJek’s explosive growth, from being a ride hailing app, to a multi-platform one that is a now a major eCommerce player in Indonesia, especially in last mile delivery.

Sartaj shares GoJek’s focus on three pillars, customer incentive, driver rewards and pricing, to ensure consistency in service delivery quality. He also discusses how he looks to improve platformization with his team through innovation, by putting people over processes, and helping engineers address challenges in order to stay agile and scalable.

From sitting at the side of the street to solve production issues, to managing and growing a team of over 1,000 in just a few years, listen in as Sartaj shares interesting personal excerpts on GoJek’s journey in shifting from a startup “hustler” mindset, to a more corporate way of working, and everything that it entails.

Sartaj Singh

Sartaj Singh is the Head of Engineering Platforms at Gojek. Sartaj is one of the few engineers who has been with GOJEK since the early days. As a literary enthusiast, he never thought that he would end up working in tech. Sartaj is responsible for driving growth, standardizing and improving Indonesia’s multi-service platform.

Theo Davies

Theo is Head of Cloud Sales Excellence & Productivity at Google Cloud and host of “That Digital Show APAC”. He is a record breaking salesperson, sales leader, coach and speaker with a 20+ year career beginning in sales. Theo is also the President of the Google Public Speaking Academy.

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Interview

Gojek site
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What’s something cool you’re working on?

Theo is trying out Snapchat and is excited about Snap partnering with Google Cloud

Hosts

Stephanie Wong and Theo Davies