Grab, Uber’s rival in Southeast Asia, pulls in strategic investment from Hyundai

Grab, Uber’s rival in Southeast Asia, pulls in strategic investment from Hyundai
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Grab, Uber’s rival in Southeast Asia, pulls in strategic investment from Hyundai

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Grab, Uber’s closest rival in Southeast Asia, continues to slowly release information about its newest funding round after it revealed it has netted a strategic investment from Hyundai.

To recap, the Singapore-based firm raised a massive $2 billion led by SoftBank and China’s Didi Chuxing last July with plans to extend the round by a further $500 million. Back in August, it revealed that Toyota was one contributor — via its Next Technology Fund — and now the Korean automaker has joined the party via a deal that, like Toyota’s, is undisclosed.

While not forthcoming on the size of the investment, Grab said it plans to work with Hyundai on a number of initiatives that will include a new service based around its electric vehicles. That will feature the IONIQ Electric, the model which Hyundai used as part of WaiveCar’s car-sharing platform in Los Angeles.

Grab has run autonomous vehicle pilots in Singapore with MIT-spinout Nutonomy — which is now owned by Delphi — and it is also working with Drive.ai following an investment in the U.S. startup, but it hasn’t done much with EVs thus far.

Read also:Microsoft makes Azure Bot Service open source to enable developers build better conversational bots.

Hyundai also has services operational in the Netherlands and Austria, but a partnership with Grab — which claims 2.3 million drivers and 77 million consumer app downloads — would represent its most significant consumer exposure to date.

Uber doesn’t provide comparative figures for its business in Southeast Asia, but Grab appears — at this point — to be ahead in a region that is widely seen as nascent but with growth potential.

Southeast Asia as a cumulative population of more than 600 million consumers with internet adoption growing fast to bring a total of 330 million people online, that’s more than the entire U.S. population. Ride-hailing is predicted to grow into a $20.1 billion per year industry by 2025 up from $5.1 billion in 2017, according to a report co-authored by Google.

Grab said it completed its billionth ride in November. The company, which is valued at $6 billion by investors, has expanded beyond rides to offer a mobile payments service in Singapore that it plans to expand to more markets this year.

Source: techcrunch