Grab Holdings Inc. (“Grab”), Southeast Asia’s leading super app, today announced it has secured US$1.46 billion of fresh funding from the Softbank Vision Fund (“SVF”).
This capital injection from SVF brings the total financing secured in Grab’s current Series H round to over US$4.5 billion. Other investors in this round include Toyota Motor Corporation, Oppenheimer Funds, Hyundai Motor Group, Booking Holdings, Microsoft Corporation, Ping An Capital, and Yamaha Motor.
Anthony Tan, Grab’s Co-Founder and CEO said, “SoftBank and the Vision Fund are long-standing strategic investors and we are grateful for their continued support. 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.”
David Thevenon, Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, said: “We have been working alongside Grab for a number of years and are privileged to support the evolution of its user-driven technologies. This 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.”
Ming Maa, Grab’s President said, “We have been blessed with overwhelming shareholder support in our current fundraising round, with strong interest both in terms of capital invested and the quality of strategic partners seeking to support the continued development of Grab. We continue to receive new investor interest and look forward to welcoming more global industry leaders as partners in 2019.”
Grab intends to use the funds to advance its super app vision in Southeast Asia, with the aim of bringing more every day services, greater accessibility and convenience to users. Grab plans to expand its verticals such as financial services, food delivery, parcel delivery, content and digital payments, and roll out new services announced in 2018. 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.
In particular, Grab plans to invest a significant portion of fresh proceeds in Indonesia, where it is the leader in on-demand transport with 60 percent of the two-wheel market and 70 percent of the four-wheel market. Grab’s Indonesian business is expanding rapidly, with revenue more than doubling in 2018. Grab will use the fresh capital to boost the expansion of GrabFood and GrabExpress and roll out new verticals in the country. Grab is part of the largest digital payments ecosystem in Indonesia through its partnership with OVO and Tokopedia. GrabFood is growing rapidly in Indonesia, operating in 178 Indonesian cities from 13 at the start of last year, with delivery volumes growing almost 10 times in 2018. In January 2019, GrabFood was the second largest food delivery service provider in Indonesia, with 44 percent of respondents saying it was the food delivery service they used most often, up from 25 percent in April 2018, according to Kantar, a third-party research firm.
On a group level, Grab’s transport business has grown robustly since the merger with Uber in Southeast Asia, almost doubling its revenue from March 2018 to December 2018. GrabFood’s revenue grew 45 times in that time period. GrabFood, the only regional food delivery player, is present in six countries across 199 cities. In 2018, Grab Financial Group became the only platform to have access to e-money licenses across six of the largest Southeast Asian economies. Since its launch in March 2018, Grab Financial Group has seen its monthly transactions grow by almost five times to December 2018. In the same period, GrabExpress also increased instant and same-day delivery volumes by more than three times regionally, and is now available in 150 cities.
The past year has seen a significant expansion of the Grab ecosystem through partnerships with global industry leaders such as Toyota, Hyundai, Microsoft and Mastercard. Grab also inked partnerships with national champions and regional industry leaders like Thailand’s Central Group and Kasikornbank, Indonesia’s OVO, Bank BTN and Bank Mandiri, Singapore’s United Overseas Bank, Philippines’ SM Investment Corporation, Vietnam’s Moca and Malaysia’s Maybank, amongst others.