Because of ubiquitous communications, freelance workforces and low transaction cost, an on-demand industry is witnessing growth, unlike any other industries. An industry which was fueled by early on-demand service providers like Uber and Airbnb, now applying principals of these companies to broader markets. Social habits and sophisticated mobile apps are the two great forces which are speeding this trend.

According to Karl Marx, the world would be divided between people who have money but don’t have time to complete the chores and people who don’t have money but have time to work for people to complete their chores. An on-demand industry brings these two groups of people under the same roof to trade with each other.

Though the business model of on-demand services has always been profitable, entrepreneurs are still hunting the possible ways to make it more profitable. Nadiem Makarim, Kevin Aluwi, and Michaelangelo Moran, who are the founders of the Gojek, have revolutionized the on-demand industry, business model and potential of it by accommodating more than one on-demand services in a single app.

In this blog, you will get to know,

• What is a multi-service app and a single -purpose app?
• Insight into an on-demand multi-service provider – Gojek.
• On-demand business challenges you need to know before developing an on-demand app like GoJek.
• How much does it cost to develop an on-demand app like GoJek?

What is a multi-service app and a single-purpose app?

A multi-service app or multi-purpose app is designed and developed to let users request for multiple on-demand services from the single app. In contrast, a single-purpose app which is designed and developed to offer only one specific service to the users.

With the official launch of Uber in 2011, the on-demand economy evolved. But they followed the narrow approach to minimize the risks as customer acquisition for an on-demand company was a challenge at that time. But as the on-demand industry grew, integrating multiple services in a single app turned out an easy and least risky approach.

Following are some of the advantages of developing a multi-purpose app.

• A multi-purpose app provides unified experience as different modules work together and users can utilize all important services from the one place.
• Since the data storage is centralized, it eliminates the possible chances of data silos.
• Cost of developing a multi-purpose app is much lesser than developing different single-purpose apps for each service.

Gojek on-demand multi-service providing company is the unicorn company, and the only company from South East Asia, which is included in Fortune’s 50 companies. In the next section of the blog, we will get to know a few more facts about Gojek. 

How big Gojek is?

• Since its launch, it has raised more than $1 billion of funding and the estimated value of Gojek is around $10 billion.
• The value for money metric score of the Gojek was only 4.4 when it was launched. But after only one month, it rose to 16.4.
• During the beta launch, the customer score of Gojek was only 1. But the current customer rank of Gojek is 22.3.
• Gojek is accommodating dedicated growth and product teams. These teams work parallel to ship data-driven and product-focused solution of any problem.
• Gojek is currently operating its business in Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia.
• As of June 2018, there were 1894 employees working for Gojek and the average age of the employees was 28 years.
  
• Currently, more than two million drivers are registered on Gojek.
• It processes more than 100 million transactions for 25 million monthly users.
• Gojek is offering 18 app-based on-demand services.
  

These numbers of Gojek can surely make any entrepreneurs get out of the bed and start an on-demand service providing company like Gojek. However, looking at the mightiness of such multi-service business, you don’t have to belittle some of the business challenges that you will surely encounter before starting or even after deploying on-demand multi-service business. Knowing those challenges is crucial because the way you hurl back these challenges will define the success of your business. 

Top on-demand business challenges you need to know before developing an on-demand app like Gojek

 
Customer acquisition

Though on-demand service isn’t the new concept which hots off the market, new on-demand service provider company has to pull out all the stops to acquire the initial users. These initial users will help you a lot to achieve long-term success. Many companies which failed to acquire more users during the first two years, became the victim of the thin market problem even though such market problem has never been popped out in the on-demand industry.

The initial customer acquisition process can last longer and what makes it more challenging is the fact that as a startup, you also need to make sure that the cost to acquire a customer (CAC) should be as minimum as possible to keep your startup away from the financial instability.

So, do you have any plan to execute customer acquisition process while keeping the CAC as minimum as possible?

Growth

To acquire the initial customers, you may opt for an online marketing campaign. But here it is worth to mention that as a startup, you don’t have any other choice than following city-to-city roll-out model and an online marketing campaign only work efficiently if you have national footprints. 

So, do you have any other growth channels to be successful with the on-demand business like Gojek?

 
Supply management

Looking at the way how an on-demand industry works, you are the supplier of the platform, those people who register themselves on your platform to offer services are the suppliers of the services and users who are using your services are creating the demand. So, as an on-demand business owner, you have to keep the supply and the demand synchronized. You have to make sure that enough number of service providers are registered on your platform to satisfy demand without clogging up any business process. 

So, are you equipped with techniques to maintain the supply?

 
Customer service

Customer service should not be overlooked. Though you successfully acquire a good number of users and service providers, if you end up providing poor customer service to your users, you will soon be considered as another failed on-demand service provider. However, providing an on-demand and satisfactory customer service isn’t as pocket-friendly as you think. You need to build a proper IT infrastructure and hire a dedicated staff which is of course too costly for a startup. And even after spending huge money, you also need to avoid a situation where a customer issue demands you to use a more expensive channel like a phone rather than less expensive channel, chat.
 

So, do you have inexpensive ways to make your customers feel that you actually care about their issues?

 
Legal Norms

Doing your business of on-demand services while not crossing the legal boundaries is one of the biggest challenges you have to overcome. Many on-demand service providing companies like Uber and Airbnb have been fighting legal battles over the charges like income instability and privacy. So, before jumping into the on-demand industry, hold your horses and study the legal norms of areas where you wish to commence your on-demand service business.
 

So, have you studied the ways to stay within the law?

 
On-demand app development cost

An on-demand app is a fundamental need for starting a business like Gojek and so, to develop an on-demand app like Gojek, you may have decided the budget to follow. However, the cost of on-demand app development highly depends on the number of customized features you ask on-demand app development company to integrate into your app. So, if you want to integrate customized features in the app (which is recommended to stand out), you need to be open-ended with the on-demand app development budget.

Also read : Be the next “Unicorn” by developing a GoJek clone app that integrates multiple services under one platform

So, are you able to spend more than your decided budget to be noteworthy?

 
How Coruscate can help you and how much does it cost to develop an on-demand app like Gojek?

Coruscate is the top on-demand app development company. We have already discovered the possible challenges an entrepreneur faces while making money from the on-demand business like Gojek and most importantly, we have decoded each of them. Thus, rather than only developing an on-demand app like GoJek, we will become the strategic partner of your business and help you to get rid of every problem. Thanks to our hybrid app development approach and rapid agile methodology, we deliver the on-demand app like GoJek within 45 to 55 business days and under $10k. We also provide a free demo of Gojek like app and free consultation. So, feel free to ask for it.