Grab Goes Public

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From CNBC:
Southeast Asia’s ride-hailing giant Grab is going public via a record-setting SPAC merger with Altimeter Growth Corp., valued at nearly $40 billion.Grab will receive about $4.5 billion in cash, which includes $4 billion in a private investment in public equity arrangement.Upon completion of its merger, the SoftBank-backed company will trade on the Nasdaq under ticker symbol GRAB.


Similar to Uber and Lyft here in the US, the only problem we had in SE Asia was communication with the driver. Grab, ranked No. 16 on last year’s CNBC Disruptor 50 list, delivers an array of digital services such as transportation, food delivery, hotel bookings, online banking, mobile payments and insurance services from its app — thus the “super app” title. It operates in most of Southeast Asia, serving more than 187 million users in over 350 cities across eight countries.

So, is this a money Grab, like Uber? I like their food delivery services by moto. But some of their motos also transport passengers. The drivers tend to go quite fast, weave through traffic, use unauthorized short cuts, smoke, and go the wrong way on one way streets.

But it may end up more successful and safer than Uber or Lyft. We shall see.

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