Grab’s co-founder launches venture capital arm to help start-ups avoid ‘huge mistakes we made’
Grab Ventures to nurture an eco-system of start-ups with the goal of eventually creating 100 million gig economy entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia
Anthony Tan, CEO and co-founder of Grab, the Southeast Asia online-to-offline mobile platform, may be borrowing a page from his mentor Masayoshi Son’s playbook by launching a venture-capital arm to invest in promising start-ups.
Calling it a “pay it forward” moment for Singapore-based Grab, Tan said on Tuesday at the Innovfest Unbound conference in Singapore that the idea of Grab Ventures is to see how to use the Grab platform as a “launch pad” for start-ups in the region and to “mentor and share the huge mistakes that we have made so that you don’t have”.
Son, the founder of Japan’s SoftBank, is one of the world’s leading tech investors and is an investor in Grab, Didi Chuxing, Uber Technologies and Ola, making him a kingpin in the world of mobility-based services. Cheng Wei, the chief executive of China’s Didi, also sits on the Grab board, as does Uber’s Dara Khosrowshahi after Grab bought out Uber’s businesses in Southeast Asia in exchange for a stake.
By nurturing an eco-system of start-ups, Tan is aiming to eventually create 100 million “micro entrepreneurs” in the Southeast Asia region, or gig-economy workers that have been able to benefit from working on a Grab service. He cited examples of Grab delivery employees who have been able to get a bank account and access to financial services after working for the company.
In its six years, Grab has created close to 6.6 million such income-generating opportunities across Southeast Asia, according to Tan. “We started out wanting to solve the safety issue with public transport, especially for women. Our mission has gone much bigger.”