Three years, $340M funding, millions of users: GrabTaxi’s Anthony Tan reflects on the journey

So far, GrabTaxi is one of the big startup success stories of Southeast Asia.Founded in Malaysia by Anthony Tan in 2012, the taxi app is now available in 21 cities across the region, and has raised a total of US$340 million in funding.

GrabTaxi lets users find available taxis in their area, connect with the driver, and get fare estimations ahead of time. In contrast to booking apps which are specific to a single taxi operator, GrabTaxi works with all of them. For drivers, the app leads to more bookings and allows them to plan their routes more efficiently. Moreover, GrabTaxi takes a lower cut per booking from the driver than their taxi operators. In Singapore, for example, taxi operator Comfort takes a 40 Cent cut for each booking, while GrabTaxi takes only 30 Cent, a cab driver reveals.

The concept has proven effective for both taxi drivers and users, according to Tan, as its popularity was evident from day one.

“We had 11,000 app downloads on the first day,” says Tan on stage at Tech in Asia Singapore 2015 while sharing insights from his founder’s journey.

GrabTaxi now has several million downloads. According to Tan, the app is averaging seven bookings per second. He also says that the app’s increasing popularity is not due to marketing, but due to the fact that it solves a real problem.

“We started GrabTaxi because the taxi system in Malaysia was a mess. Drivers weren’t making enough money and hated their jobs. Women couldn’t go around safely. We needed to do something about it.”

In the beginning, it was a challenge to introduce drivers to the new concept. The drivers were not necessarily tech savvy and, according to Tan, they were jaded and unwilling to get into it.

“We had to go fleet to fleet, driver to driver,” Tan recalls. “We had to find drivers where they hang out – at airports, shopping malls, at gas stations.”

“Now, drivers come to us,” says Tan. “But we still insist on signing up new drivers only after a face-to-face meeting. We check all the papers. Safety is critical to us.”

GrabTaxi now has around 500 employees, and Tan says the face-to-face sign up process is something he can’t compromise on, even if it slows down the scaling process.

Tan emphasizes the importance of staying in touch with every aspect of his company:

I still go into the call center regularly and pick up the phone, to know what it’s like to be the call center agent, and to speak with clients. When I’m in another city, I use GrabTaxi to get around. Most of the time, the drivers have no idea who I am. I ask them about their experience with the app […] You have to feel the problem, see the problem, and fix it yourself. Your teammates will feel that, and then everyone comes together. Then it scales.