SINGAPORE, March 6, 2019 – Grab Holdings Inc. (“Grab”), announced it has secured US$1.46 billion of fresh funding from the Softbank Vision Fund (“SVF”).
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.”
NPN is happy to have worked together with Grab in more ways than one for a few years now and are proud of Grab’s achievements thus far and even more excited for upcoming improvements.
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.
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.
NPN is built on a vision to redefine retail by enabling seamless engagement between retailers, supplies and end users since 2009. NPN has built a retail ecosystem that blends digital products and services in a unified way that features the retailers, suppliers and end users at the center.
By harnessing the latest advancement of internet and technology, we have been benefiting our stakeholders and building up trust with our partners through our work and commitments over the years. Our consistency in our development and work ethics have resulted in the generous support by more than a thousand of retail outlets and reputable companies in Singapore.
article credits: https://www.grab.com/sg/press/others/grab-secures-us1-46-billion-investment-from-the-softbank-vision-fund/