Indonesia’s Go-Jek acquihires Bengaluru AI recruiter AirCTO to fuel its super-app ambitions

Indonesian firm Go-Jek, diversifying away from its roots in ride-hailing to food delivery, courier and hairdresser services, and bill payment, has acquihired Bengaluru-based artificial intelligence (AI) recruitment platform AirCTO, owned by LaunchYard Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

As part of the deal, whose financial details were not disclosed, AirCTO’s team will join Go-Jek to build products that aid in the recruitment of talent that is needed to fuel the Indonesian firm’s super-app ambitions. 

“At AirCTO, over the past three years, we’ve helped a range of startups and corporates source qualified candidates for critical technology roles,” said Atif Haider, founder of AirCTO. He added that the company had considered acquisition offers from others before the deal went through. AirCTO is backed by former Nokia director Francesco Cara, who invested an undisclosed amount during the company's angel round in 2017. 

The Google- and JD.com-backed Go-Jek, which is a unicorn, also announced the opening of a second engineering centre in Gurugram in India. Go-Jek will open its Go-Food product division as part of the Gurugram operations. 

“We have looked at multiple ways to expand our operations and concluded that Gurugram is a logical destination to set up shop, not least because of the amazing talent we have found in the area. Go-Jek recorded an annualised Gross Transaction Value (GTV) of $9 billion as of 2018, and the hyper-growth journey we’ve been on demands talent that is willing to take risks, fail, learn and continue to scale a company that aims to solve everyday problems for Southeast Asia,” said Sidu Ponnappa, managing director India at Go-Jek. 

He added that the company will consider further acquisitions to bring in entrepreneurial teams for the multi-service business model at Go-Jek.

The Southeast Asian app, which started as an on-demand ride-hailing company, also offers hyper local delivery, food ordering, digital payments and other services in multiple geographies. Go-Jek runs its engineering centre in India and plans to hire 100 employees for its new engineering centre in Gurugram after Bengaluru. This will take the total headcount of the company to 500 in India by year-end. 

The company has businesses across Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia and covers 204 cities and regencies across Southeast Asia.