<article>In the latest development within the Grab ecosystem, CEO and co-founder of online-to-offline startup Kudo, Albert Lucius, has recently left his position in the company to take up an executive role in payment company OVO.</article>

In the latest development within the Grab ecosystem, CEO and co-founder of online-to-offline startup Kudo, Albert Lucius, has recently left his position in the company to take up an executive role in payment company OVO.
The move coincides with a recent report that suggested that Singapore-headquartered Grab has acquired a stake in OVO, which is owned by Indonesian conglomerate Lippo Group.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Lucius now holds the position of OVO’s director and Chief Product Officer (CPO). He has been replaced as Kudo CEO by fellow co-founder Agung Nugroho, who was previously the Chief Operations Officer (COO) of the company. According to Nugroho’s LinkedIn profile, the switch took place in October.
Lucius, a former analyst at Goldman Sachs and product engineer at Apple, and Nugroho, a former consultant at Boston Consulting Group, founded Kudo in 2014. The platform enables unbanked consumers to shop online by connecting them with online merchants and service providers.
Kudo became a subsidiary of Grab in 2017 after the ride-hailing giant acquired the startup in 2017 for a reported $100 million.
OVO, meanwhile, is the company Grab has turned to in order to aid its digital payment woes. The two forged a partnership in December last year after Grab failed to secure an e-money license for GrabPay amid rigid central bank regulations.
However, in November this year, Reuters reported that Grab has taken the partnership to another level by acquiring an equity stake in OVO.
When asked by DEALSTREETASIA about the report, Grab said it does not comment on rumours and speculations. However, it added that OVO remains an independent company, and not a Grab entity.
Having OVO as an affiliate company would strengthen Grab’s foothold in the country and more importantly, put it in a good position in its face-off with local rival Go-Jek on the payments front.
Go-Jek’s foray into the payments space through its own payment arm Go-Pay has been game-changing. The popularity of Go-Jek as a ride-hailing app has eased the rise of Go-Pay, which features exclusively as an in-app service in the Go-Jek platform. Go-Jek boasts 108 million app downloads to date and claims 50 per cent of its users uses the Go-Pay service.
OVO, meanwhile, which also acts as the payment solution for local unicorn Tokopedia, claims to be the largest digital payments platform in the country with 1 billion transactions recorded this year. It is understood that the huge size of total transactions is due to the higher amounts paid by wealthier customers at the restaurants and retail chains where it is used.
In its range of use cases, OVO is markedly advantaged by its access to the Lippo ecosystem, which includes malls, F&amp;B business and hospitals. OVO says it is available at 90 per cent of malls in 294 cities in Indonesia, including hypermarkets, department stores, coffee shops, cinemas, parking operators, and hospitals.
In an effort to challenge OVO’s domination in the retail sector, Go-Jek has recently established a partnership with Japanese retail group Aeon, according to a report by Nikkei Asian Review. The collaboration will see Aeon accepting payments using Go-Pay and also offer home deliveries using Go-Jek&#8217;s fleet of drivers.
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A recent report suggested that Singapore-headquartered Grab has acquired a stake in OVO, which is owned by Indonesian conglomerate Lippo Group.

Kudo co-founder Lucius joins payments startup OVO amid Grab investment rumour

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Kudo co-founder Lucius joins payments startup OVO amid Grab investment rumour

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