The Malaysian budget carrier AirAsia Group will buy Indonesian ride-hailing and payments firm Gojek’s business in Thailand in return for $50M of shares.
The deal will give Gojek a 4.76 per cent stake in AirAsia SuperApp, valuing the division at around $1bn, more than the pandemic-hit airline’s current market value of $868M at a time when it has been looking to raise more capital.
This agreement with the Indonesia start-up unicorn comes a week after AirAsia applied for a digital banking licence in Malaysia, signalling a shift in focus towards digital business as most of its fleet remains grounded amid coronavirus restrictions.
“By taking on Gojek’s well-established Thai business, we’ll be able to turbocharge our ambitions in this space to become a leading Asean challenger super app,” AirAsia Chief Executive Tony Fernandes said in a statement. A lifestyle platform for travel, e-commerce and financial services, AirAsia SuperApp is one of three companies under the AirAsia Digital group. The others are logistics venture Teleport and the BigPay fintech business.
