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Southeast Asia Uber rival Grab raises $750m Series F on $3b valuation
Southeast Asian Uber Technologies Inc. rival GrabTaxi Holdings Pte Ltd (Grab) has raised $750 million Series F in a round led by Sotfbank.
According to Forbes, the round was raised on a $3 billion valuation.
Founded in 2011, Grab (the company has dropped the taxi part from its trading name) operates in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines offering a variety of services including taxi, motorcycle and vehicle trips.
The company claims to provide 1.5 million rides a day and while operating in major cities also operates in a number of small centers as well, servicing 30 cities altogether.
“Our vision is to drive Southeast Asia transportation forward and transform the region’s mobile internet ecosystem,” Grab Chief Executive Officer Anthony Tan said in a statement. “This latest funding, the largest in the history of Southeast Asia consumer technology, strengthens our ability to pursue those long-term goals as we continue to build on our market leadership.”
Expansion
The funding follows Uber’s decision to sell its China operations to Didi Chuxing Technology Co. to allow it to focus its growth efforts in other regions, with Southeast Asia being near the top of the list.
To complicate matters further Didi was formerly part of a global alliance with Grab, India’s Ola (ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd.). and Lyft Inc. that gave the four companies a global reach to compete with Uber, a reach Grab now no longer haves.
The end game in Southeast Asia as it is everywhere is about expansion and eventually market domination, and that’s exactly what Grab is trying to do before Uber gets a serious foothold, particularly in the region’s largest country Indonesia, where its GrabCar and GrabBike services grew by 250 times year-on-year.
“We see [Indonesia as] an almost $15 billion market for ride-hailing services alone,” Tan added.
Including the new round Grab has raised $1.43 billion to date from investors including 500 Startups, China Investment Corporation, Coatue Management, GGV Capital, Jixun Foo, Hillhouse Capital Group, Qunar.com, Tiger Global Management, Vertex Ventures, and others.
Image credit: jonrussell/Flickr/CC by 2.0
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