General
August 1, 2018
5 minutes read

Grab is reportedly set to announce $2 Billion in new funding for its payments unit

GrabPay head Jason Thompson image credit : Grab According to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, SE Asian…

GrabPay head Jason Thompson

image credit : Grab

According to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, SE Asian ride-hailing company Grab is set to announce a new funding round of roughly $2 Billion for its service which would value the company at a $1 Billion plus from its most recent $10 Billion valuation citing people familiar with the matter by the WSJ.

This report comes as similar but somehow conflicting with that from Reuters stating the set to be announced figure as a $1 Billion investment for its GrabPay payments unit to boost its efforts in the mobile wallet and payments space taking on another challenge and adventure to boost its reach and business operations.

The funding will come from various U.S. investors and strategic partners according to Reuters with the funding notably coming just coming roughly 2 months after the Singapore headquartered ride-hailing company got $1 Billion in funding from vehicle manufacturer Toyota.

Grab being the major player in the South East Asian ride-hailing space is also set to launch Grab Ventures as stated by the company earlier this year which will see the company partner with several startups and make direct investments aimed at expanding and cementing the reach of both itself and the partners wit provision of its several services to a larger number of people.

Grab still stands as one of the most heavily funded global startups having raised over $4 Billion in equity funding from the likes of Softbank, Didi Chuxing, Tiger Global, Vulcan Capita, 137 Ventures, Coatue Management, GGV Capital and several others.

The company faced major competition from Uber before a deal which saw the company merge its operations with Uber’s SE Asian unit combining its reach to become the no 1 ride-hailing company in the region facing only major competition from Indonesian based Go-Jek which stands as another heavily funded startup having raised $2.1 Billion in total across several rounds from the likes of Tencent, JD.com, Google, Meituan Dianping, Temasek, Rakuten, DST Global, Sequioa Capital and others.

With this, Grab has also faced backlash from Singapore’s Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore (CCCS) over monopoly concerns which the company has argued against terming the CCCS backlash of having “substantially lessened competition” as “one-sided”.

Grab was launched 6 years ago by ex-Googler Anthony Tan along with a female co-founder Tan Hooi Ling who have both led the company to enormous growth with Anthony occupying the position of CEO and the other Tan overseeing critical sectors of company’s operations focusing on business strategy growth, customer experience, analytics and people operations.