A representative of Didi Chuxing, China’s dominant ride-hailing company and an investor in Grab, did not respond to an inquiry from the Post on whether the company participated in the funding round, although a Bloomberg report in August suggested that Didi Chuxing and Softbank were backing a new round of financing for Grab that would exceed US$600 million.
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This increases the company’s total capital position to more than US$1 billion, it said in a statement on Tuesday (Sept 20).
Now, it plans to leverage its US$1 billion capital position to continue expanding its transportation services in Southeast Asia.
Given the large market opportunity, Grab said it will continue to invest in Indonesia, the biggest market in Southeast Asia with over a third of the region’s population. The company said in the first half of 2016, its GrabCar and GrabBike services grew by 250 times on-year in Indonesia.
“We are particularly excited about the growth opportunity in Indonesia, where we see an nearly US$15 billion market for ride-hailing services alone, as well as the potential to extend GrabPay’s platform regionally”, he added.
“I am confident in our technology, data science and machine learning platforms, which have continued to scale to support our bold ambitions in the region”, Tan added.
The money will be used to expand its services in South-east Asia, and Indonesia in particular.
Grab has also partnered with Citi to enable cardholders to use Citibank points to pay for Grab rides.
Though Grab has not revealed the impact of the latest round of funding on its valuation, it has promised to invest in mobile payments and sustain its pace of Asian expansion. Grab, Uber’s main ride-hailing rival in Southeast Asia, refused to disclose the amount or details on other investors.
“Our vision is to drive Southeast Asia transportation forward and transform the region’s mobile internet ecosystem”. It has been hiring top worldwide talent in its R&D centers in Singapore, Beijing and Seattle, to develop innovative features like Flash that pools cars and taxis, improve back-end routing capabilities, and build its proprietary POI mapping database.
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Today, customers book up to 1.5 million rides every day through Grab’s service, which holds more than 400,000 drivers, according to the company. Since then, it has expanded its business and now it also offers rides in private cars, motorbikes, and carpooling services across 31 cities in six countries in Southeast Asia.
