Why Bluebird refused to join the price war
I just went through Raymond Chin’s breakdown of how Bluebird, the Indonesian taxi company, brought in Rp 5.7 trillion in revenue in 2025, even though Uber, Gojek, Grab and then COVID took turns hitting them for years.
What got me thinking is that their strategy turns out to be the opposite of what I’d always assumed was “normal” for a small business.
The decision that looked stupid
Bluebird nearly collapsed. In 2020 its revenue fell from Rp 4 trillion to Rp 2 trillion, with a loss of Rp 161 billion. Everyone thought conventional taxis were finished.
But instead of cutting fares to fight the ride-hailing apps, they made a decision that looked stupid: keep fares 20–30% higher.
Here’s the logic. Startups like Uber and Gojek have investors, and their mandate is “growth at all costs”. They burn money to keep prices low and pull in customers, until their competitors run out of breath.
Bluebird realized that if it joined the price war, it would be the first to lose. Not because it was stupid, but because its breath really was shorter than that of the players burning money from investors’ pockets.
This is the part that stuck with me. For freelancers, solopreneurs and small businesses, 99% of us don’t have the privilege of getting a cash injection when our strategy goes wrong for 3 months.
Yet every time a competitor sets a lower price, our reflex is to lower ours too. That’s like entering a breath-holding contest against someone with an oxygen tank.
You’ll definitely lose. It’s only a matter of time.
Moving upmarket
So what did Bluebird do, if not fight on price?
They moved upmarket. They got obsessive about SOPs: friendly drivers, clean cars, consistent service.
Meanwhile, quality on the ride-hailing apps became less consistent. Bluebird stayed at the same quality as 10 years ago.
So the positions flipped. What used to be “expensive” is now “worth it”.
One fleet, five products
But the most interesting part is this. That Rp 5.7 trillion in revenue doesn’t only come from taxis. 30% of it, almost Rp 2 trillion, comes from other businesses that are still about mobility:
- Golden Bird (Alphard rental with a driver, for corporate clients)
- Big Bird (bus rental for groups)
- City Trans (intercity shuttles)
- Bluebird Kirim (deliveries)
- Selling used cars from the fleet
One asset, the fleet plus the SOPs plus the drivers, turned into 5 products.
Why is this genius? A conventional taxi is a car driving around looking for passengers, burning fuel even when it’s empty, with a thin margin per trip.
B2B mobility works differently. The cars only move once there’s a contract, so the income is predictable and recurring: office executives going back and forth every day, companies on annual contracts.
They moved from “selling trips one at a time” to “selling capacity under contract”.
Three lessons I wrote down
1. If you’re short of breath, don’t enter a price war. It’s not about being brave or not. It’s math. Whoever has the oxygen tank is going to win the breath-holding contest.
2. High revenue without profit is an illusion. I’d rather have 10 clients with Rp 10 million in profit than 100 clients with Rp 1 million. The 100 look busy from the outside, but there’s little left after costs. Cash flow is what keeps a business running.
3. Diversify from the assets you already have, not from new trends. Bluebird didn’t suddenly start selling skincare. They drew on what they already had: the fleet, the drivers, the SOPs. Five products from one competency.
For anyone who feels they have to “slash prices to survive”: maybe the question isn’t how to be the cheapest. It’s how to make the customers who pay more feel that it’s worth it.
Watch the full analysis on Raymond Chin’s YouTube channel (in Indonesian). It’s worth watching in full if you want to go deeper.