Southeast Asian taxi-booking app GrabTaxi Holdings Pte Ltd yesterday said it had raised more than US$350 million in the firm’s biggest-ever fundraising to boost its business in the rapidly growing market.
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Its largest round to date, the latest funding included investors from China and the US, and pushes its overall funding to some US$700 million, the company said in a statement Wednesday.
GrabTaxi was founded in Malaysia as MyTeksi in 2011, and is now headquartered in Singapore.
GrabTaxi, which was launched in 2012, said it has a presence in 26 cities across six countries in Southeast Asia, including Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
Uber had its offices in Sichuan’s Chengdu and Guangdong’s Guangzhou raided by police in May, while seven drivers were arrested in Hong Kong this month for lacking the proper permits as the government decides how to deal with this key element of the emerging “sharing” or peer-to-peer economy.
CIC is a sovereign wealth fund investing foreign exchange reserves on behalf of the People’s Republic of China, and its last net valuation of assets put them at US5.2bn (£366bn+).
It was unclear, however, how much the latest fundraising valued the company.
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This chauffeur-like service represents just one part of the company’s expanding portfolio, which includes taxi-hailing, car-hailing and shuttle bus services.
