G0-Jek, the Indonesia-headquartered ride-sharing app this week acquired AI recruitment platform AirCTO and opened its second engineering and product development centre in Gurugram.
As part of the deal, the AirCTO team will be joining Go-Jek with immediate effect and will be looking into building products that accelerate the recruitment of talent for them. The acquisition aligns with Go-Jek’s focus on hiring premium talent to support the development of its ‘Super App’. The company did not disclose the terms of the deal.
Go-Jek has also announced the opening of a new office in Gurugram, for which it plans to hire 100 employees aiming to reach a total headcount of 500 in India by the end of 2019. As part of its expansion plans, the company is also considering further acquisitions in India.
“Our investment in Gurugram underlines our commitment to growing the Go-Jek India story. 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 who are willing to take risks, fail, learn and continue to scale a company that aims to solve everyday problems for Southeast Asia. With operations underway in Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, we will now consider whether further acquisitions are needed as we seek to bring in entrepreneurial teams who can help us further develop the multi-service business model that makes Go-Jek a leader in Southeast Asia,” said Sidu Ponnappa, MD India at Go-Jek.
On the acquisition of Bengaluru-based AirCTO, Sidu added, “I’m super thrilled to have AirCTO’s talented team join us. The team will use technology to help us scale up our hiring processes. Finding quality talent is always a challenge, and Atif and team are here to find technology-based solutions that will help us to overcome this challenge.”
Atif Haider, Founder, AirCTO, said, “At AirCTO we’ve focused on the pain points technology firms experience as they seek to find talent that fits their requirements. We believe that recruiting as an industry needs a major upheaval, and we started AirCTO with this in mind. Over the past three years, we’ve helped a range of startups and corporates source qualified candidates for critical technology roles. We were in talks with a number of other tech giants, but we found Go-Jek to be the best fit, as we share similar DNA — something that’s really important for us. We intend to use our prowess in recruitment to contribute to the hyper-growth Go-Jek is currently experiencing across Southeast Asia.”
Go-Jek currently runs one of the largest JRuby, Clojure, Java and Go clusters in Asia. Its robust tech-infrastructure is built and managed by just 350+ engineers positively impacting millions in Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
At the beginning of the year, Go-Jek announced the first closing of its ongoing Series F funding round led by Google, JD.com, and Tencent, along with Mitsubishi Corporation and Provident Capital. For more information click here.
