Grab ‘ likely’ to raise funds in near future

Ride- hailing company Grab, Uber Technologies Inc’s largest rival in Southeast Asia, is likely to embark on a round of fundraising as it works to develop new offerings such as financial services, its chief executive told Reuters on Tuesday.

“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,” Anthony Tan, group chief executive officer and co- founder of Grab, said in an interview after an event to mark the company’s fifth anniversary.

In five years, Grab’s network has grown from 40 drivers in one country to more than 930,000 across 55 cities in seven countries including Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines.

The Singapore- based company raised $ 750 million in a funding round in September, which sources said valued it at more than $ 3 billion.

Grab’s investors include Chinese peer Didi Chuxing, China Investment Corp, Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp and Vertex Ventures Holdings, which is a subsidiary of Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings.

Tan also said that Grab is spending less on incentives per transaction even as competition with Uber increased after the US company exited the Chinese market last year. Market share shows that Grab has about 70 percent across the region, he said.