Indonesian unicorn buys Bengaluru healthcare start-up

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SME Times News Bureau | 29 Sep, 2016
Indonesian unicorn Go-Jek has acquired the Bengaluru-based home healthcare services start-up Pianta from SLX Logistics Ltd for an undisclosed amount, said its Indian arm on Wednesday.

"The acquisition will help us to develop our logistics and transportation platforms to support our Indonesia operations," Go-Jek said in a statement.

First start-up of Indonesian origin to be classified a unicorn after raising $550 million from KKR and Warburg Pincus LLC in a fresh round of funding in August, Go-Jek was floated in 2010 as a hyper-local transport and payment gateway.

"Post-acquisition, Pianta will be integrated with our Indian arm, which focuses on product innovation, mining data and crafting consumer experiences for our parent firm," said the statement.

Pianta is Go-Jek's third acquisition in India after two buys in 2015 - city-based C42 Engineering and Delhi-based CodeIgnition.

"We will double our headcount in India to 70 people soon, as we seek to push innovation. Pianta will strengthen our technology to offer best services and advance our mission to become the on-demand application choice for all Indonesians," said Go-Jek Founder and Chief Executive Nadiem Makarim in the statement.

Pianta helps book appointments with healthcare providers for home visits to offer physiotherapy, nursing and collect lab samples.

The year-old start-up raised an undisclosed seed funding in May from Freecharge founders Kunal Shah and Sandeep Tandon.

Co-founded by former Ola and Flipkart executives Swaminathan Seetharaman, Ganesh Subramanian and Nitin Agarwal, Pianta has 250 home service providers on its platform.

"Go-Jek provides us an opportunity to leverage capabilities we have built in the domain of on-demand delivery and logistics. It presents us with a large canvas to create a much larger impact," said Seetharaman.

Started as a bike-taxi business, Go-Jek diversified into food delivery, one-hour courier delivery, grocery delivery and has aggregated trucks on its platform.

"We are looking for talent in data science, mobile and security to shore up our technology operations in Bengaluru and Singapore," added Makarim.