Indonesian on-demand motorcycle taxi service Go-Jekhas acquired Bengaluru-based home health care service Pianta, founded by former Ola executives, for an undisclosed amount as it looks to shore up on talent at its India engineering centre. Go-Jek will integrate the entire team from Pianta, including the founders, into its engineering centre in Bengaluru.

The deal marks the Indonesian company’s third acquisition in India, with C42 Technologies and CodeIgnition being acquired last year.

“Pianta’s role will be very important to strengthen our technology excellence to bring the best services for customers. We believe this acquisition will advance our mission to become the largest on-demand application of choice for all Indonesians,” said Nadiem Makarim, Founder and CEO of GO-JEK Indonesia, in a statement.

Pianta was founded in 2015 by Swaminathan Seetharaman, Ganesh Subramanian and Nitin Agarwal, all of whom held top engineering positions at India’s largest on-demand taxi hailing firm Ola.

Sidu Ponnappa, who was roped in with the acquisition of C42 Engineering will continue to head Go-Jek’s India engineering centre as managing director. The founders of Pianta will form a larger core leadership team, with the expertise of building on-demand services they acquired at Ola being put to use.

The acquisition of Pianta comes on the back of Go-Jek raising a massive $550 million round led by KKR and Warburg Pincus LLC. Go-Jek, which is Indonesia’s most valuable startup competes with Uber and Grab Taxi in the taxi hailing market, but has also diversified itself into food delivery, on-demand logistics and other such sectors.

Go-Jek is the equivalent of several Indian startups such as Ola, Swiggy, Dunzo, Grofers and UrbanClap all wrapped into one. While the company has setup its engineering centre in India to tap its highly skilled technology talent, it hasn’t announced any plans to enter the market for business.

Source: The Business Standard

Image Courtesy: Business Insider