Southeast Asian tech company Grab Indonesia has teamed up with a unit of Indonesian conglomerate Sampoerna Strategic Group to digitalise small grocery stores or warungs on its network, according to a statement on Friday.
With this, small grocery stores or warungs within the Indonesia Sembilan (SRC) app will be able to offer delivery services using GRABExpress. Customers can also enjoy cashless transactions using the OVO QR code. OVO is also part of Grab’s digital ecosystem.
As of end-2022, the SRC app has over 225,000 warungs in Indonesia connected to its network.
“The partnership is to support the government’s goal to reach 30 million SMEs going digital by 2024,” said Roy Nugroho, director of Grab for Business, Grab Indonesia in a statement.
“The collaboration is a way to level up SMEs. In the future, the company will make another collaboration to support SMEs,” Rima Tanago, director, PT SRC Indonesia Sembilan.
Besides Sampoerna Group, Grab has teamed up with Indonesian tech unicorn Bukalapak and Indonesian conglomerate Emtek Group to onboard warungs in Indonesia. Its warung customers, called Mitra Bukalapaks, have onboarded grocery service GrabMart. The Mitra Bukalapaks sell consumer goods and staples to Grab customers.
In July 2021, Grab and Emtek Group jointly launched an initiative to digitise SMEs in tier 2 and 3 cities in Indonesia. The development comes at a time when the two companies are exploring opportunities through their subsidiaries to expand their operation in the archipelago as competition hots up the technology landscape with Sea Group and GoTo being other prominent players.
Besides this initiative, Grab also established a bundled offering with Emtek’s video-on-demand platform Vidio that offered premium subscribers a discount on GrabFood.
Both Grab and Emtek have cross-investments in each other. Emtek has invested a total of $375 million in Grab Teknologi Indonesia while Grab picked up a 4.6% stake in Emtek in March 2021.
Meanwhile, in April 2022, the Indonesian digital payment platform and unicorn Xendit picked up14.96% stake in Bank Sahabat Sampoerna. Regular operations will not change at Bank Sampoerna – even after the partnership, both parties will continue to work independently.
