A Singaporean multinational ride-hailing company announced that it has collaborated with an Indonesia-based food solutions provider to develop cloud-based kitchens in Indonesia. This cloud kitchen or virtual restaurant is claimed to be a form of business to develop the digital economy in the country. With this collaboration, the two companies will open more than 80 locations operated by both.
For the ride-hailing giant, the collaboration not only helps them support the expansion of the culinary business more comprehensively but also opens more opportunities for businesses to test new menus and concepts to stay ahead. According to them, this cooperative step is suitable, as they are also a food delivery platform while the food solutions company handles operational management.
The benefits obtained by their merchants cover at least four things. First, operational management will be directly guided by the two companies. Next, they will be connected directly to the delivery network owned by the two companies. Then, their promotion of brands that are within the scope of the food delivery app has an existing consumer base that is ready to try various kinds of innovative menus and flavours.
Meanwhile, the food solutions company supports the acceleration of expansion to support the growth of the digital economy in Indonesia. Their mission is to support culinary entrepreneurs to grow in the digital era by providing managed expansion solutions through cloud kitchens.
In the cooperation agreement, three things cover the vision and mission of both. First, cloud kitchen expansion, in which the companies work together to expand the cloud kitchen network and help culinary businesses reach new locations and cities, and quickly increase the scale of their business.
Second, merchant partners will have access to the food delivery app’s features such as ‘order at once’ where customers can order from multiple merchants in one order, and benefit from a wider range of sales opportunities.
Lastly, both companies plan to work with culinary entrepreneurs to create new concepts, test them on the platform, and develop them in the cloud kitchen network. This approach allows culinary entrepreneurs to take a data-driven approach to experiment and test new concepts firsthand, at minimal costs.
Users located in at least 7 cities in Indonesia, such as Jabodetabek, Bandung, Malang, Makassar, Bali, Medan, and Surabaya will benefit from the programme.
The companies also said the steps they would take this year would further facilitate the digital development of merchants and MSMEs in the country.
Furthermore, reports say that Indonesia has a huge potential market for cloud-based systems. The cloud market is still at its nascent stage in the country. However, it is quickly gaining popularity among Indonesian firms.
Local companies are quickly embracing cloud technology to cut their cost of operations. The Indonesian government is at the forefront of the development of cloud data centres and virtualisation technology in the country. They aim to deploy consolidated, distributed data infrastructure with strong disaster recovery capabilities.
Previously, companies hosted all the data in their data centre. However, operating the data centres incurred huge costs. Private data centres required annual maintenance, software updates, and a large amount of power to maintain the enterprise data centre. By migrating to the cloud firms can save the costs associated with operating private data centres.
In terms of segments, the manufacturing sector has contributed the most to the cloud market. Various SMBs and large business concerns operating in the country have also adopted cloud computing to cut their operational costs.
Also, sensing the rising demand for cloud technology among organisations in Indonesia, several local and foreign IT companies have started offering cloud computing solutions to business concerns in the country.
