Singapore-based ride-hailing unicorn Grab has raised $4.5 billion in a massive ongoing Series H funding round that the company says will help it “grow Southeast Asia’s technology ecosystem” and its “super app”.
The company aims to use the funding to expand into a range of industry verticals. At the heart of its expansion plans are GrabPlatform, a suite of APIs that give access to components of Grab’s technology including transport, logistics, payments, user authentication, messaging, insights and mapping.
In July of 2018 the Grab company reported that they had processed more than two billion rides. It took the company just over five years to amass one billion ride shares, but they hit the two billion mark nine months later.
Some $1.46 billion of the new investment came from the Softbank Vision Fund (SVP). Partner David Thevenon said in a release that the investment will “help the company explore exciting new opportunities across on-demand mobility, delivery and financial services as it continues to grow its offline-to-online platform across Southeast Asia.”
The recent funding round also brought in investment from Microsoft, Toyota Motor Corp, Oppenheimer Funds and Hyundai Motor Group. While Grab have not disclosed a total evaluation on the company it has been cited as worth circa £8.3 billion.
Funding To Be Used in Indonesia
Grab have stated that they plan to invest a ‘significant’ portion of the funding into Indonesia where they claim they are currently the market leader for on-demand transportation as they hold 70 percent of the four-wheel market and 60 percent of the two-wheel market. There they plan to fund the expansion of their GrabFood and GrabExpress which is a courier delivery service.
Last year Uber sold its stake in the South East Asia market to Grab in exchange for a 27.5 percent stake in the Singapore tech enterprise, a deal that is currently being probed by Singapore’s Competition and Consumer Commission. The deal resulted in Grab obtaining 80 percent market share in the region.
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Grab’s Co-Founder and CEO Anthony Tan comment in a release: “The investment is a clear statement of belief in our vision to grow Southeast Asia’s technology ecosystem as the region’s Number 1 super app. Looking ahead, we aim to continue improving the lives of many millions of Southeast Asians by providing enhanced income opportunities through our platform, and giving our users more choice and convenience.”
The company is hoping to leverage its popularity by expanding into verticals such as financial services, food delivery, parcel delivery, content and digital payments, and roll out new services built on Grab’s open platform, GrabPlatform, these services include on-demand video, in partnership with HOOQ; digital healthcare, in partnership with Ping An Good Doctor; insurance, in partnership with ZhongAn International; and hotel bookings, in partnership with Booking Holdings.
