SE Asia ride-hailing giant Grab becomes decacorn, raises $1 Bn at $10 Bn valuation

After world major Uber, India’s Ola and Chinese giant DiDi Chuxing in ride-hailing space, Southeast Asia’s Grab has emerged as the next biggest company in the space.

Like its counterparts, the Southeast Asian ride-hailing company once again reported its presence on Thursday when it announced to raise an investment of $1 billion from a clutch of financial firms, including global asset manager OppenheimerFunds and China’s Ping An Capital.

Other investors in the new funding include Microsoft Corp co-founder Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital, Macquarie Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

It plans to use a significant portion of the proceeds to invest in Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s biggest market where Go-Jek is the dominant player in ride-hailing.

Go-Jek counts Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd, private equity firms KKR & Co LP, Warburg Pincus LLC and venture capital player Sequoia Capital among its investors.

The new funding comes after it sold a $1 billion stake at a valuation of more than $10 billion to Toyota Motor Corp in June.

In July last year, Grab raised close to $2 billion from Softbank and Didi Chuxing.

In March this year, Uber sold its South East Asia business to the Singapore-based company reportedly in exchange for a 27.5 per cent stake.

Amidst this, Grab is also gradually entering the Indian ecosystem via payment method. Early this year, it acquired payment company iKaaz for an undisclosed amount. With this acquisition, the Softbank-backed company plans to expand its digital payments platform GrabPay.

Importantly, Grab started working on a payment platform GrabPay in July 2016. It had opened R&D center in Bengaluru for the same purpose. The company believes that offering digital payment services can give it an upper hand in Southeast Asia’s ride-hailing market.

The development was first reported by Reuters.