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The Chinese retail giant and Japanese telecoms and investment conglomerate have become the two biggest shareholders in the newly formed GoTo Group, the result of the recently confirmed merger between Indonesian start-ups Tokopedia and Gojek, Nikkei Asia reports.
GoTo is expected to become a major player in the world’s fourth most-populous nation and will span businesses from car-sharing and fintech to online shopping and delivery.
As the only investors with double-digit stakes, the two behemoths are primed to benefit from GoTo’s success. With different voting rights tied to different shares, Alibaba and Softbank’s stakes won’t necessarily give them substantial control over GoTo, but they are likely to reap significant rewards when the firm goes public, which it plans to do by the end of 2021.
Softbank, which was a major investor in e-commerce platform Tokopedia, nabbed a 15.3 percent stake, the biggest single shareholding in the merged entity. Alibaba Group Holding, which also invested in Tokopedia, has the second largest stake with 12.6 percent.
