While Zhang Yida was still staying in Indonesia, GoJek CEO Nadeem Makarim came to visit.
Zhang Yida met with him in the private reception room provided by the five-star hotel where he was staying.
“Here, first of all, congratulations to Mr. Zhang’s Ruixiang Group for becoming the world’s most valuable unicorn.
Haha, 200 billion US dollars is really amazing!”
Makarim was born in a prestigious school, and his family is an established political family in Indonesia. His social etiquette is very decent.
Speaking of polite words at this time, it is just one thing after another.
Zhang Yida smiled faintly. He guessed that Makarim suddenly came to see him instead of calling or sending emails as usual. It should be because he had something important to discuss.
"Buy Together has made big news this time. Now the whole Indonesia is discussing this company."
Makarim smiled and said, “US$1.2 billion has set a record for the highest single round of financing in the history of an Indonesian Internet company.
With a valuation of US$7.2 billion, it has also become the highest-valued unicorn company in Indonesia. Even across Southeast Asia, only our old rival Grab can compete with Buy Together."
Seeing that Makarim never got to the point, Zhang Yida confirmed his guess that there was definitely something wrong with this kid.
However, Zhang Yida did not expose it, but followed Makarim’s words: “The two largest Internet market segments in Southeast Asia are e-commerce and transportation.
E-commerce competition is fierce. Amazon, Penguin, and Ali have all entered the game. It is still unclear who will win in the future.
But the transportation situation is already very clear, and the winner in the future will be either GoJek or Grab."
Makarim nodded, which is why he did not get involved in the e-commerce industry.
If the American Internet is the master of the Chinese Internet, then the Southeast Asian mobile Internet is the apprentice of the Chinese mobile Internet and is deeply influenced by the Chinese giants.
Makarim has always wanted to make GoJek a super APP that can not only hail taxis, order takeaways, but also provide express delivery services.
China's WeChat, Alipay, and Touronghui have set a good example for him. He believes that the correct development direction of super unicorn companies is this, providing diversified services to maintain the traffic of their own platforms to the greatest extent, so as to generate more
Great commercial value.
Makarim couldn't hold back his words anymore and said truthfully: "After Grab acquired Uber Southeast Asia, the market has jumped to the first place in many ASEAN countries.
Take the Philippines, for example, where Grab already accounts for 93% of the local market share.
This is by no means good news for GoJek."
As a Grab shareholder, Ruixiang and Zhang Yida also knew the details of Grab’s acquisition of Uber’s Southeast Asian business.
Similar to Didi’s acquisition of Uber China, Grab merged with Uber Southeast Asia for a 27.5% stake.
This transaction not only successfully established Grab's status as the number one taxi-hailing player in Southeast Asia, but also made Grab's valuation reach 10 billion US dollars, making it the first super unicorn in Southeast Asia's history.
The limelight lasts forever!
Why it is Grab's turn to acquire Uber Southeast Asia is also very important.
SoftBank, Didi and other important players in transportation are all shareholders of Grab. At the same time, Uber is a shareholder of Didi, and SoftBank is a shareholder of Uber and Didi.
Except for Ruixiang, GoJek's shareholders are all ordinary investment banks. The backend is not as strong as Grab, so naturally they can only watch the fat go into the mouths of their opponents.
Zhang Yida was also helpless in this matter.
Ruixiang is a shareholder of the four major taxi-hailing platforms including Didi, Grab, GoJek, and India's Ola. If he had agreed to exchange shares with Uber when selling Green, Zhang Yida could have added Uber to his business map.
But Zhang Yida did not agree to do this because Uber could not promote Ruixiang’s mobile payment in Europe and the United States.
This is not the case with the other four taxi-hailing apps, which all have important partnerships with Mobao Pay and three other local e-wallets.
However, none of these companies has a high shareholding in Ruixiang. The main reason is that the taxi-hailing field is too expensive and cannot afford to play.
SoftBank is different. It has a high shareholding ratio in all major taxi-hailing software, making it the largest player in transportation in the world.
After SoftBank took over the shares transferred from Penguin, plus some of the equity acquired from previous investments, SoftBank currently holds more than 15% of the shares in Xinrui Group.
Zhang Yida also remembered something at this time.
Leech Financial announced at the beginning of the year that it would transfer 33% of its shares to Ali Baba Group.
This incident that caused conflicts between SoftBank, Yahoo and other foreign shareholders and Jack Ma, and damaged Jack Ma's reputation, is finally coming to an end.
The matter dates back to 1989. Through various operations, Jackma spent a total of 330 million yuan twice to spin off the Alipay business from Ali Baba Group.
And put this business into Zhejiang Ali Baba Business Co., Ltd., in which Jackma holds 80% shares.
According to the equity ratio at the time, SoftBank and Yahoo held 34.5% and 22.6% of Alipay shares respectively, but Jack Ma personally held 80% of the shares.
Of course, the foreign shareholders quit, believing that Jack Ma was against its business reputation, and spread the matter internationally to put pressure on Jack Ma.
Even the investment of US dollar funds in China's Internet industry in those two years was affected because venture capital was afraid that the same thing would happen and suffer huge economic losses.
The explanation given at the time was that the country did not allow foreign investment to control online payment tools, and Jackma had no choice but to make this decision.
After communicating with SoftBank, Yahoo and other shareholders, relevant agreements were reached:
Leech Financial is required to pay an annual intellectual property and technical service fee to Ali, which is equivalent to 37.5% of Leech Financial’s pre-tax profits;
At the same time, if conditions permit, Ali has the right to invest in and hold 33% of the equity of Leech Financial and transfer the corresponding intellectual property rights to Leech Financial.
To say that the matter was resolved satisfactorily would not be the case.
Otherwise, Yahoo Japan would not have chosen to jointly establish the Japanese joint venture e-wallet PayPay with Ruixiang. This is actually due to Son’s dissatisfaction with Jack Ma.
SoftBank has been reducing its stake in Ali, and by the middle of this year it still held 28.8%, which is equivalent to indirectly holding 9.5% of the shares of Leech Financial.
However, the delivery of this part of the equity has not yet been completed, and it is expected to have to wait until next year.
And even if the delivery is completed, SoftBank's equity in Leech Financial is far lower than Ruixiang, which holds more than 15% of the shares.
If SoftBank favors Leech Financial Services, and a series of Internet applications invested by SoftBank in Southeast Asia and India are biased toward Leech Financial Services e-wallets, it will have a huge impact on Ruixiang's overseas mobile payment business.
But Zhang Yida is not worried about Sun Zhengyi's preference for Leech Financial Services Group. After all, businessmen will always settle accounts.
Seeing Zhang Yida suddenly distracted, Makarim coughed, and the former quickly came back to his senses.
"Sorry, I was just thinking about something."
Makarim waved his hand and said it was okay, and went on to say: "Faced with the huge competitive pressure brought by Grab, GoJek will conduct a huge round of financing next."
"Huge financing?"
Zhang Yida asked: "How much is it?"
Makarim said excitedly: "1.5 billion US dollars!"
Hearing this, Zhang Yida smiled and said: "This is a good thing! Are you here to discuss this with me? There is no need to discuss it, I support it."
Makarim seemed hesitant to speak, which made Zhang Yida frown. Could there be something hidden?
So I asked Makarim: "Who participated in this round of financing?"
Makarim gritted his teeth and said crisply: "There are Google, Temasek, Blackstone, Magnesium Tuan, Goudong and... Penguin!"
Glancing at Zhang Yida, whose face was as dark as water, Makarim felt helpless.
If not, how can GoJek compete with Grab, which has many backers?