Navigating Business

Google’s navigation platform Waze provides businesses with the opportunity to approach customers on-the-go.

- Marella Putri

Jakarta has the fourth-longest user time engagement on navigation platform Waze of any city in Asia-Pacific with an average of 81 minutes and an average driving distance of 30 km. Given the city’s notorious traffic conditions, the convenience of GPS technology in mobile map applications has seen it gradually become a part of people’s daily lives. These facts are valuable assets for community-based navigation platform Waze in building its business in Indonesia, where the company is exploring solutions that it can offer to both users and advertisers.

Waze is a mobile navigation app that provides real-time traffic data. Wazers (the term for Waze users) report traffic updates, which will be verified by Waze’s GPS technology. Notifications of issues such as road closures, speed cameras, police checkpoints, and accidents and other hazards will appear on the Waze map for everyone to see. Therefore, allowing Waze to suggest alternative routes so users can save time by avoiding congestion.

Waze was founded by Amir Shinar, Ehud Shabtai, and Uri Levine in 2007, originally in Israel. Google acquired the company in 2013 for $1.3 billion, and since then Waze has been synergizing with Google Maps. Google Maps is built for B2B purposes, mainly for discovery content where all kinds of locations and transportation alternatives are registered. Waze works on a B2C model, learns user behavior and gathers community reports for its navigation platform. Waze’s real-time traffic updates are sourced for Google Maps, and likewise Maps’ landmarks complete the map on Waze.