Decode Grab.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “investment sector” (ID: pedaily2012 ), author Ren Qian.
Southeast Asia “Super App” is on the rise.
The investment community (WeChat ID: pedaily2012) has recently learned that Softbank Group will invest US$2 billion in the Southeast Asian travel platform Grab in the next five years, mainly to Indonesia. In addition, Grab plans to establish a second headquarters in Indonesia.
Reviewing the first half of 2019, Grab has sent at least four financing news, including Grab’s $1.46 billion strategic investment from Softbank in March. Since 2014, Softbank has almost led or participated in every round of Grab’s financing, and the investment amount is usually more than 500 million US dollars. A month ago, Grab also received an additional financing of $300 million in Inshun. Invesco invested $403 million in Grab last year and currently has a total investment of $703 million.
What kind of “big Mac” is this? Not long ago, the investment community (ID: pedaily2012) visited Grab Singapore headquarters to observe the Southeast Asian “Super APP”. Grab co-founder Hooi Ling Tan revealed that will receive a total of $6.5 billion in funding before the end of 2019 and accelerate the expansion of the business landscape. At the same time, she said that the company does not need an IPO for the time being, and there is no clear timetable.
Founded for 7 years, Nearly 20 financings, over $10 billion
The rising Southeast Asian “Super Unicorn” is drawing more and more people’s attention. At least from the “golden” level, Grab is the crown of the crown.
Since its inception in 2012, Grab has completed nearly 20 rounds of financing with a total value of more than $10 billion. Behind Grab, there are a lot of “star” capital, including not only Xiangfeng Investment, GGV, Softbank, Tiger Global Fund, Gaochun Capital, CDH Investment, CIC, Ping An Capital, etc., but also Didi, Go Where are Chinese companies, as well as traditional car companies.
It can be seen that after Softbank and Didi entered the market, Grab achieved a leap in financing. In October 2014, Grab received an exclusive investment of $250 million from Softbank. Since then, Softbank has been involved in almost every major investment in Grab and has gradually increased its weight.
In March of this year, Softbank invested $1.46 billion in the H round of financing that Grab was raising, which made the H1 round of financing amounting to $4.5 billion. In an interview with the media in April, Grab founder Anthony Tan said, “Softbank will provide unlimited support for Grab’s growth.”
According to the previous data provided by Moteng Ventures, before the H round, Grab’s three major shareholders were Uber, Softbank and Didi, and the shares held by the three were 27.5%, 20% and 14% respectively. But after the latest round of financing, Softbank is likely to surpass Uber to become Grab’s largest shareholder. It is worth mentioning that Softbank also played a key role in the merger of Grab and Uber Southeast Asia last year.
Softbank is madly “sweeping goods” in the global travel market. In addition to Grab, Softbank is an important shareholder of Uber and Didi, and also invested in Brazil’s 99 Taxis and India’s Ola.
Annual income exceeds $1 billion,“Drip + Meituan + Ant” Super App
Grab’s ambitions in the Southeast Asian market have long been revealed. Grab currently operates the largest transportation network in Southeast Asia and is one of the most active taxi platforms in the region.
According to the statistics of 2018, Grab occupies 95% of the third-party taxi taxi market in Southeast Asia and more than 70% of the private taxi market. It is the first mobile travel service provider in Southeast Asia with annual revenue of more than 1 billion US dollars.
But now, you can no longer use the “Net Car Platform” to define Grab. Grab now has three pillar businesses, namely financial services including payments, loans, insurance, incentives, etc.; mobile services including travel, takeaway, flash, etc.; and third-party partners. Open platform.
Grab’s mobile services mainly include travel, takeaway, delivery and grocery delivery. Travel is the main business of Grab. Around the transportation, Grab provides taxis, express trains, motorcycles, special cars, and rides. , minibuses, shared electric scooters and other services.
In 2017, Grab entered the financial services business. For the application scenario, the e-wallet GrabPay was launched; in order to solve the problem that users want to pay without cash but no bank account, the financial service platform Grab Financial was launched. The investment community has learned that Grab Finance is currently the only one.A financial technology company that has obtained electronic payment licenses in major Southeast Asian countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand.
In the view of Grab President Ming Maa, the development of mobile travel and payment in Southeast Asia has just begun, and there is huge potential. The financial services business will be the fastest growing business unit of Grab, and the revenue in the next two or three years is expected. Overtake the taxi platform revenue.
Grab’s growth trajectory has similarities with Didi, but Grab has positioned itself not only for network car platforms and financial payment service providers, but for “Southeast Asia’s Super App.”
Hooi Ling Tan revealed that Grab’s business model seems to be a combination of Alipay, Ant Financial, Didi, Meituan and many other Chinese mobile applications. Grab believes that the positioning of “Super APP” and “the world’s first company with the main strategy of developing different life service technologies including travel” will enable Grab to scale faster and help it accelerate its expansion.
In July last year, Grab also launched GrabPlatform, an open platform that promotes its GrabPay or GrabExpress by seamlessly integrating third-party services, including transportation, logistics, payments, user authentication, social, news, and maps. The popularity of such services. Currently based on GrabPlatform, Grab provides on-demand video services in cooperation with HOOQ, AI smart medical business in cooperation with Ping An Doctor, insurance business in cooperation with Zhong An International, and hotel reservation business in cooperation with Bookings.com Holdings, including clothing, food, housing and transportation. Integrated business in the field.
As of now, Grab users have exceeded 160 million downloads, and users can access more than 9 million drivers, merchants and agents. The business covers online car, mobile payment, take-out, express delivery, insurance, etc., covering Singapore and Malaysia. Major Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Cambodia and Myanmar.
Before, Ming Maa mentioned in an interview with the media that Grab “has a very clear profit roadmap, including the profitable time node. Now Grab’s main task is to continue to expand the ecosystem, cooperate with different partners, and invest with investment. Fang, constantly develop new technologies and services.”
Establishing a venture capital department:Three years of $250 million to find Southeast Asian unicorns
Grab’s business landscape is expanding rapidly, but few people know that Grab established the venture capital department Grab Ventures in June 2018 with the goal of cultivating more unicorns in Southeast Asia to create an ecosystem.
In the past year, Grab VenturEs has established branches in Singapore and Indonesia, invested in a number of start-ups such as Happy Fresh, Drive.ai, and plans to invest $250 million in the Indonesian technology ecosystem in the next three years.
Grab’s vision is to become a super-app in Southeast Asia, providing a one-stop shop for more than 600 million consumers. But Grab believes that to achieve this goal, not only need to set up new business within Grab, but also support more start-ups, and jointly expand the scope of services and user scale, and Internet giants such as Tencent, Ali, and Meituan. The development path coincides.
Aditi Sharma, head of investment and projects at Grab Ventures, told the investment community: “We are constantly looking for high quality partners in the ecosystem. Strategically, building a healthy partner ecosystem around Grab users The system makes more sense.”
In addition to the fund, Grab Ventures also launched an accelerator project called Grab Ventures Velocity (GVV). GVV chose startups after the seed period to help them build capacity and test their solutions in Grab’s ecosystem.
The investment community learned that the first batch of GVV projects was completed in January 2019, and selected five of the more than 500 applicant companies, namely Book My Show, Helpling, Minutes, Sejasa and Tueetor. Among them, Book My Show and Tueetor are ticket booking websites and online education platforms respectively; Helpling and Sejasa provide family services in Singapore and Indonesia respectively; Minutes is an online booking platform for hairdressing, salon and spa services.
Sharma said that compared to traditional VCs, Grab can quickly provide strategic support to start-ups in ecosystems. “With our investment, the help of these start-ups is the most direct and efficient.” She revealed that Among the batch of GVV projects, some companies have increased by more than 70% after joining.
At the same time, the application for the second batch of GVV projects has also started. According to Sharma, the second batch focuses on two aspects: First, create more value for farmers and small businesses. Second, for 2B projects such as restaurants and small grocery stores. Sharma emphasized that “the second batch of GVV projects will allow Grab to get involved in emerging, but potentially disruptive, future supply chain technologies.”
Obviously, Grab is trying to build stronger barriers through investment, and the prototype of this investment landscape is gradually emerging.