Grab bags US$1.46b of funding from Softbank

It will invest most of the funds in the expansion of its verticals and Indonesian business.

Grab Holdings Inc. has secured US$1.46b of fresh funding from the Softbank Vision Fund, bringing the total financing in Grab's current Series H round to over US$4.5b. Other investors in this round include Toyota Motor Corporation, Oppenheimer Funds, Hyundai Motor Group, Booking Holdings, Microsoft Corporation, Ping An Capital, and Yamaha Motor.

According to an announcement, Grab plans to expand its verticals such as financial services, food delivery, parcel delivery, content and digital payments, and roll out new services that it unveiled in 2018. Built on Grab’s open platform, GrabPlatform, these services include on-demand video, in partnership with HOOQ; digital healthcare, in partnership with Ping An Good Doctor; insurance, in partnership with ZhongAn International; and hotel bookings, in partnership with Booking Holdings.

Grab also plans to invest a significant portion of fresh proceeds in Indonesia, in which it has grabbed 60% of the two-wheel market and 70% of the four-wheel market. Grab’s Indonesian business is expanding rapidly, with revenue more than doubling in 2018, the company said. 

Grab will also boost the expansion of GrabFood and GrabExpress and roll out new verticals in the country. The unicorn is part of the largest digital payments ecosystem in Indonesia through its partnership with OVO and Tokopedia. GrabFood has also grown in the archipelago, operating in 178 Indonesian cities from 13 at the start of last year, with delivery volumes growing almost 10 times in 2018. 

On a group level, Grab’s transport business has grown since the merger with Uber in Southeast Asia, almost doubling its revenue from March 2018 to December 2018. GrabFood’s revenue grew 45 times in that time period. Moreover, since its launch in March 2018, Grab Financial Group has seen its monthly transactions grow by almost five times to December 2018. In the same period, GrabExpress also increased instant and same-day delivery volumes by more than three times regionally.

With the SoftBank investment, the transport unicorn continues to amass value. Previously, Tokyo Century and Thailand's KASIKORNBANK have also announced capital injections into Grab.