Ride-Hailing Giant Grab Accelerates Expansion Plans With $300M Infusion

Funding enthusiasm for ride-hailing companies just never seems to run out of gas.

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Southeast Asian ride-hailing giant Grab has now raised $300 million less than four months after raising $1.46 billion from the SoftBank Vision Fund. This brings the Singaporean startup’s total raised since its inception in 2012 to a staggering $9.1 billion, according to Crunchbase data. It also takes the self-proclaimed “super-app” company’s valuation to more than $14 billion, reports the Financial Times.

Atlanta-based Invesco Ltd. was the sole investor in this latest round, which mean the U.S firm overall total pumped into Grab to $703 million, according to the company. Earlier this year, Invesco completed its purchase of OppenheimerFunds, which first invested $403 million in Grab in July 2018.

Justin Leverenz, team leader and senior portfolio manager for Invesco Emerging Markets, said the firm is confident in “Grab’s ability to unlock new opportunities across on-demand mobility, delivery and financial services in the region.”

Indeed, as we reported earlier this year, although Grab launched as a ride-hailing company, it has since expanded its services to include food and parcel delivery, bike and car rentals, and payments. It also broadened its geographic reach from only Singapore to Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Back in December, Crunchbase Reporter Savannah Dowling tracked Grab’s seemingly never-ending Series H. All within the same round, the company got money from a range of others: automakers like Toyota Motor Corp. and Hyundai Motor Group. Also involved were big tech players like Microsoft. Before SoftBank, the company’s most recent infusion of cash came from Yamaha Motor Co. – an investment of $150 million.

Unbelievably, this Series H is probably still not over. In April, CEO and co-founder Anthony Tan told Reuters that Grab was “looking to raise another $2 billion this year to ramp up expansion.”

Besides raising money, Grab is also an investor. Earlier this week, the company made headlines for participating in an $8 million Series A into London’s Splyt Technologies, which aggregates your favorite ride-hailing platforms.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias