Asia's ride-hailing service Grab raises another $1 billion

Southeast Asian ride-hailing service Grab announced Thursday it had raised a total of $2 billion in its current financing round, which means the company has raised another $1 billion since June 13, when Toyota Motors said it had invested $1 billion in Grab. The new investors include a number of global financial institutions, Grab revealed in its statement Thursday.

Grab said the fresh capital would go toward expanding the company's range of services in Southeast Asia.

A particular area of focus for Grab would be Indonesia, where the company said it would "use a significant portion of the proceeds from the current fundraise." Indonesia is home to over half the company's 7.1 million or so people who provide various services on Grab's platforms, including ride-hailing, food and grocery delivery, payment system and so on. The country also happens to be where Grab faces stiff competition from local ride-hailing rival Go-Jek.

Earlier this year, in March, Grab acquired Uber's regional business in Southeast Asia, including UberEats. That deal is still being investigated by regulators in some countries in the region to see if it violated anti-monopoly rules or gave Grab an unfair advantage over competition.

Among the new investors in the company, the names mentioned in the statement include OppenheimerFunds, Ping An Capital, Mirae Asset – Naver Asia Growth Fund, Cinda Sino-Rock Investment Management Company, All-Stars Investment, Vulcan Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Macquarie Capital.

Ming Maa, president of Grab, said in the statement: "We are honoured to welcome these top-tier financial institutions into our roster of strategic investors and partners. Grab is today the industry-changing O2O [online-to-offline] platform that enables millions of consumers and entrepreneurs to come online and drive the digital economy in Southeast Asia. We have seen overwhelming interest from global strategic investors and partners who are keen to partner with us to capture the region's booming growth."

In another recent statement, from July 24, Grab said it hoped to raise a total of $2.5 billion in its current round of fundraising, and announced a deeper partnership with its two old backers, Chinese taxi service Didi Chuxing and Japan's venture capital fund SoftBank. The two companies had invested a combined $2 billion in Grab in July 2017.

Anthony Tan, group CEO and cofounder of Grab, said at the time: "We are delighted to deepen our strategic partnership with DiDi and SoftBank. We're encouraged that these two visionary companies share our optimism for the future of Southeast Asia and its on-demand transportation and payments markets, and recognize that Grab is ideally positioned to capitalize on the massive market opportunities. ... We look forward to continuing to work with our valued partners in the future."

Based in Singapore, Grab has operations in over 200 cities in eight Southeast Asian countries.