Grab To Pick Up Another $1 Billion As Go-Jek Covers More Ground

On the heels of its $1 billion investment and partnership with Toyota announced in June, Singapore’s ridesharing darling Grab will reportedly announce another $1 billion investment, bringing the Series H round total to $2 billion. According to the Wall Street Journal, the additional infusion of cash will bring the company’s valuation up to $11 billion.

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Backed by SoftBank and China’s ridesharing giant Didi Chuxing, Grab’s app allows hail transportation services through GrabTaxi, GrabCar, and its carpool service GrabHitch. In addition to its core services, the company recently introduced GrabAssist, a service for seniors and individuals with disabilities, and GrabFamily, a service for families with small children.

The company currently operates in 225 cities in 8 countries including Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, and Vietnam.

With ambitions to become an “everyday superapp” much like Tencent’s WeChat, Grab has also jumped into other verticals. After acquiring Uber’s regional operation in March, the company migrated the UberEats customers and vendors to its own food delivery program, and officially launched GrabFood in May, according to Techcrunch. Grab has also added bike and car rentals and parcel delivery, and has expanded its payments platform GrabPay to include in-store purchases with participating vendors. The company plans to offer other financial services to the platform in the future.

Why raise $2 billion? Regional competition may be heating up. Grab’s main competitor, Indonesia-based ridesharing company Go-Jek, has raised $2.1 billion total and was last valued at $5 billion. The Tencent-backed company has superapp ambitions of its own. Its three main overarching services– Go-Jek, Go-Pay, and Go-Life– include verticals ranging from ride hailing, grocery, and pharmacy delivery, to bill payments, at home massages, auto care, and beauty appointments. Go-Jek operates in 50 cities across Indonesia and officially launched its platform in Vietnam, Go-Viet, today and reportedly plans to expand to Thailand and the Philippines.

If Go-Jek is going to take its deep pockets to the rest of the region, Grab may have little choice but to stock up itself.

Illustration Credit: Li Anne Dias

Editorial Note: Grab has since confirmed the $2 billion round with Crunchbase News. The post has been updated to reflect that the company is operational in 225 cities.