Traveloka Enters Online Grocery Service, Great to Be a Lifestyle Superapp

While waiting for the travel and tourism industry to recover due to the pandemic, Traveloka is strengthening its steps to transform into a “lifestyle super app”

After entering food delivery services to healthtech, the startup with a valuation of $3 billion is now entering online grocery services through the Traveloka Mart brand. The “Mart” menu can currently be found in the app.

This feature enables Traveloka users to buy daily necessities, such as fresh produce and frozen food. To accommodate this need, Traveloka has partnered with several large retail companies, including Lotte Mart.

Users can access Mart services directly on the Traveloka application and can make transactions — in this initial phase, shipping is still free with no minimum purchase transactions. When entering the menu, there are now several product options that users can choose from.

As is known, Traveloka’s OTA service has been significantly affected by travel restrictions since Covid-19 occurred in early 2020. In order to remain relevant during the pandemic, Traveloka has begun to focus on strengthening services in the financial (paylater), lifestyle, and entertainment categories.

Traveloka launched a directory page for restaurants, Traveloka Culinary in 2018. Then, Xperience in 2019 which has around 15,000 activities in more than 60 countries, including events, films, to workshops. In addition, Traveloka has also penetrated the health-tech sector by providing teleconsultation and PCR and antigen test services.

Grocery Online Market

Since the last two years, online grocery services and lastly there is quick commerce, including a new phenomenon that is driving the growth of the digital industry in Indonesia. This is partly triggered by a surge in demand for online shopping for basic commodities during the pandemic.

Talking about the quick commerce trend, this service is defined as a consumables delivery service within 45 minutes with normal shipping costs.

Citing a RedSeer report, quick commerce is driven by a number of factors, such as changes in consumer behavior due to Covid-19 and impulsive or unplanned shopping behavior.

RedSeer projects the quick commerce market to be $0.3 billion in 2021 and will grow 10-15 times to $5 billion in the next five years.

In Indonesia, there are a number of startup players who positioned their business from the start as online grocery and quick commerce players, for example Sayurbox, HappyFresh, Segari, and Astro. However, there are also giant e-commerce startups that have just entered this service, such as GoTo, Shopee, and Blibli.

They take advantage of the logistics network that has been built for a long time in order to accommodate this instant need. Some of them even acquired large retail companies to strengthen their supply chain network.

Astro Co-founder and CEO Vincent Tjendra said that the main challenge in building this business is building people’s habits. This is because many people prefer to shop for their daily needs in traditional markets.

According to him, one of the keys to overcome this problem is to build a product storage point (hub) so as to allow delivery to the location closest to the user.

Traveloka Strategy in 2022

Traveloka claims to be the most popular travel booking platform in the Southeast Asia region. Traveloka CEO and Co-Founder Ferry Unardi explained that currently the company has more than 20 products and services and more than 40 million monthly active users as of January 2022.

“We, previously known as an online travel agent, have now transformed into a lifestyle superapp in Southeast Asia,” he said in a release on Sunday (13/3/2022).

Furthermore, he said the company offers end-to-end solutions with a comprehensive portfolio with more than 20 products and services under three main pillars: travel, local services, and financial services.

In addition, he said that the Traveloka application has also been downloaded more than 100 million times. He continued, going forward the company will also focus on growing with millions of partners around the world.

Meanwhile, the strategy that Traveloka will implement is to work with various partners around the world, with a total of more than 1.8 million accommodation partners to provide inventory in the Traveloka application.