Shares of GoTo rose as much as 6.2 per cent in Jakarta on Feb 4, lifting the stock’s gain for 2025 to more than 20 per cent. The trigger was word that Singapore’s Grab Holdings and Indonesia’s GoTo Group have stepped up merger talks and are aiming for a deal this year.
People familiar with the situation told Bloomberg News that discussions have intensified in recent weeks and that both sides see 2025 as the right moment. DealStreetAsia had earlier reported the target. The same people cautioned that the talks may not lead to a transaction at all.
A GoTo spokesperson declined to comment. Grab representatives had no immediate comment.
Why now
The two are the biggest ride-hailing providers in South-east Asia, and neither is profitable yet. They have talked on and off for years about a combination that would lower costs and ease competition across a region of more than 650 million consumers. Grab is backed by Uber Technologies. GoTo, formed in a May 2021 merger of ride-hailing giant Gojek and e-commerce platform Tokopedia, counts Softbank Group among its investors.
Both have moved closer to profit since listing their shares. Competition for users, though, has held prices down and squeezed margins. Growth has cooled sharply from the triple-digit rates of earlier years, as customers in the region cut spending to cope with elevated inflation and interest rates.
Each company has made smaller moves in the meantime. Grab bought a supermarket chain in Malaysia and a reservation app in Singapore. A year ago GoTo agreed to give up control of its loss-making e-commerce arm to ByteDance’s TikTok in a US$1.5 billion deal.
Regulators and rivals
Past attempts ran into disagreements between the parties and potential antitrust obstacles, since the companies dominate markets such as Indonesia and Singapore. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Nathan Naidu said the reported progress “effectively cement[s] both firms’ market leadership amid intensified rivalry in the sector, but the deal will face tough regulatory scrutiny as the two are the top on-demand-service players in many of South-east Asia’s key markets.”
He pointed to newcomers shaking up the space. Taxi operator Trans-Cab is entering Singapore ride-hailing, while foreign entrants such as Bolt, inDrive and Lalamove Ride are making headway in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.
Grab’s shares have declined about 4 per cent in New York so far in 2025. Together, the two companies are worth close to US$25 billion (S$34 billion), a market value that rivals some of the biggest companies in South-east Asia.
