COO and cofounder of Southeast Asia's most valuable startup, Grab, shares how the company grew from a ride-hailing service to a 'super app'
Grab
- Tan Hooi Ling is the cofounder of Grab, an 8-year old company now considered to be Southeast Asia's most valuable startup
- Beginning life as a single-market taxi-booking app, Grab now has interests in a range of app-based services including delivery and digital banking
- Tan identifies Grab's attempts to narrow the financial inclusion gap in the region as the company's biggest challenge
- While COVID-19 had a big impact on Grab's core ride-hailing business, its diversification efforts during the past year have helped it weather the storm
- Because of her work, Business Insider named Tan Hooi Ling to our annual list of the 10 leaders transforming supply chain in Asia.
- Visit Business Insider's Transforming Business homepage for more stories.
At the end of 2020, ride hailing company Grab took another step in its transformation journey when, in a consortium with local telco Singtel, it was awarded one of two full digital banking licenses in Singapore. The move was the latest in a series of developments that has seen the 8-year-old company evolve from a Malaysia-based taxi-booking app to a Southeast Asia-wide company with interests in digital payments, food delivery, financial services, and more.
Today, Grab considered to be Southeast Asia's most valuable startup, with a 2019 valuation of US$14 billion and is fast becoming the region's first "super app". Business Insider sat down with co-founder and COO Tan Hooi Ling to learn more about Grab's story so far and where it sees itself going next.
Business Insider: How has Grab managed to grow so large so in such a short amount of time? What are the factors that have enabled this growth?
Tan: Anthony Tan and I started Grab to solve real problems that our friends and families faced every day. We grew up in a time where it was scary to take a taxi, especially as a woman at night. So we created a solution to help people get from A to B safely. By doing so, we also created new income opportunities for people who needed them - be it single moms looking for flexible part-time work, or differently abled individuals who struggled to find regular work.
Doing this well led us to uncover other problems our customers faced. And we've been on a continuous journey to solve as many of them as possible, day after day. We did this by unshackling Grab from pre-existing beliefs and expectations. It may sound obvious now, but in our early days, many people told us what we were trying to do was not worth the effort; that the SEA market was not big enough; the problems were not resolvable; that many bigger players had tried and failed before us.
Business Insider: Grab has diversified from taxi-booking app to something close to a super app. Was this always part of the vision?
Tan: When starting Grab, we never imagined that we'd become an app that millions use every day to order food, pay online, or access services like microinsurance and telemedicine. Our focus was always about solving problems, and solving one problem led us to another. For example, while developing our transportation solutions, we discovered that millions of Southeast Asians still didn't have the right access to basic services like banking and financial services. That's why we launched Grab Financial Group.
Becoming a super app was thus a means to an end - to help provide as many solutions to our customers in the most convenient form for them. As Southeast Asians prefer to use one app for multi-services rather than downloading multiple single-serve apps that tend to use more data and space, we became a super app. Our strategy is ultimately quite simple - evolve our products and services to what our customers need most.
Business Insider: What has been the most significant and transformational new area of business?
Tan: One of the biggest challenges we're hoping to help solve is the financial inclusion gap in Southeast Asia. An estimated 70% of the population here are unbanked and invisible to traditional banking institutions. As they cannot get access to credit or other financial services, they get trapped in a vicious cycle that makes it hard for them to break out of poverty.
I remember Grab's early days when we'd meet driver-partners, one at a time, to help them set up their first bank accounts. We wanted to help them break out of this vicious cycle. Since then, we've launched our Grab Financial Group to offer financial services like payments, insurance, financing and wealth management to our customers and partners
Business Insider: In a crowded market, what is your competitive advantage?
Tan: We've had to face tough competition since the very beginning. We've found that what differentiates us from the rest is being relentlessly hyperlocal, forging the right partnerships, and investing in strategic technology. Focusing on Southeast Asia has given us a strong home ground advantage. After all, this is home and no one knows Southeast Asia's customer needs like we do. We've built on this edge by setting up R&D centres in places like Ho Chi Minh City, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore.
We've also always taken a 'partnership-first' mindset. We believe it enables us to make the biggest difference in the shortest time. For example, we partner with OVO in Indonesia and Moca in Vietnam to help accelerate cashless adoption in these economies. We also partner with a lot of global companies like Marriott International and Unilever who want our help to scale their business in Southeast Asia. With over 214 million downloads to date, we offer a huge base of highly engaged consumers. This gives us rich insight into their behavioural trends to serve them more effectively.
Business Insider: What has been the impact of COVID-19, both positive and negative?
Tan: COVID-19 has been the single biggest crisis to affect Grab. As cities came to a halt due to lockdowns, it severely impacted our ride-sharing business, which was our largest and most mature business then. To adapt to this drastic change, we were forced to think out of the box, innovate and adapt at unprecedented speed. We made significant pivots to cut costs and in parallel invest heavily into our emerging deliveries business. Thankfully, due to the tremendous creativity, agility and resilience of our Grabbers, we were not just able to weather the storm, but also end 2020 positively.
One of the other silver linings from COVID-19 has been the acceleration of digitalisation. Many sectors that have for the longest time stubbornly resisted going digital have been compelled to do so to survive. We've seen years of progress take place in months. We brought nearly 600,000 new merchants across SEA online onto our platform last year, which more than doubled the number of merchants on Grab. These include hawkers, wet markets and many other traditional businesses. Our priority now is to build on this momentum. We want to help more SMEs and traditional businesses embrace the full potential of digital transformation.
Business Insider: Where can Grab go next, both in terms of new business areas and new markets?
Tan: We're going to stay focused on Southeast Asia. There's so much more we can and want to do for the region -we've only just scratched the surface. In this part of the world, infrastructure, safety and financial access are not a given, and many remain left out of the digital economy. Technology has the opportunity to uplift the lives of millions and to move them into a new economic reality. That's what Grab is going to continue focusing on in the long run. Whether it's fostering financial inclusion, serving the marginalized with better income opportunities, or providing better services to the growing middle class.
In terms of our business strategy, we'll continue to double down on deliveries across food, groceries and logistics. Our customers have embraced deliveries in a way that will persist long after COVID-19 is behind us. We will also invest in our merchant services platform to help our merchants go and thrive online - helping them earn more, while reducing their operating costs in this new normal.
from Business Insider https://ift.tt/2XFwBiU
No comments