Nasdaq-listed Grab and Jakarta-listed GoTo, whose stocks are 60%+ below their IPO prices, pare back “superapp” push by cutting jobs and marginal business units
Mercedes Ruehl / Financial Times :
Context & Ripple Effects
The superapp thesis that produced GoTo's $18B Gojek-Tokopedia merger and its Jakarta IPO has run into a wall: both Grab and GoTo now trade more than 60% below their listing prices, and public-market patience with bundled, loss-making services has expired.
The retrenchment is well underway rather than new — GoTo cut 1,300 jobs (~12% of staff) in late 2022, and Grab CEO Anthony Tan followed in June 2023 with a memo announcing 1,000+ job cuts (11%) framed around making services 'even more affordable'. This article names the shared strategy behind those moves: dismantling the superapp itself.
First-order effects
- Thousands of employees at both companies lose roles as marginal business units are cut or shut, directly reversing the everything-app expansion that defined both platforms since their IPOs.
Second-order effects
- With both companies smaller and focused on core ride-hailing and delivery economics, the strategic case for consolidation sharpens — consistent with the revived merger talks between the two, which GoTo publicly denied but sources say resumed.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Southeast Asia's internet champions converge on the discipline GoTo eventually showed when job cuts and unit disposals delivered its first-ever quarterly net income of ~$15M — regional tech consolidating around fewer, profitable players instead of rival superapps.
The trend: Southeast Asian platform companies are abandoning the superapp model as public markets force a trade of growth ambition for profitability.