Grab Setting Sights on Financial Services

Grab may be known as a ride hailing company, but it has set its sights on other ventures, such as financial services. To that end, they are likely looking for another round of fundraising “in the near future”, according to Reuters.

Reuters reports that on top of current services and offerings, including ride hailing as well as GrabPay; Grab plans to also offer loans, electronic money transfer and money-market funds.

“These are all things under consideration for sure,” Anthony Tan, Grab’s 35-year-old co-founder and group chief executive officer, told Reuters. “Whether we are to execute any anytime soon, I can’t share that off the top of my head.”

Grab’s investors include Chinese peer Didi Chuxing, China Investment, Japan’s SoftBank Group and Vertex Ventures Holdings – a subsidiary of Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings. The company is not looking to get listed on the stock market anytime soon.

“I can’t specifically give a time line but I can imagine somewhere in the near future, there probably could be more money coming in. That’s probably quite likely,” Tan said.

Grab bought Indonesian payment service Kudo earlier this year, and Tan said Grab is seeking more acquisitions to support rapid growth.

“You will see more happening across the region with GrabPay. The first big thing was obviously the Kudo acquisition, the second one is building an engineering center dedicated to payments,” he said.

Grab is the largest ride-hailing platform in Southeast Asia with over 930,000 drivers in 55 cities and seven countries. It also provides micro finance to help drivers buy phones and has helped two-thirds open their first bank accounts – practices it said it aims to expand as it seeks to broaden its financial services and build a consumer brand.

 

 

 

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