Grab expands menu with Chope acquisition

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Hello reader,

The brother of an old friend of mine is visiting Hanoi soon, so I’ll be playing tour guide.

It’s a role I enjoy filling, as I get to experience some of the things that made me fall in love with the city all over again. I’m also looking forward to it, as he’s visiting from Shanghai, so I’ll get to learn about a place I’ve wanted to go to as well.

What interests me about China, other than its food and culture, is WeChat. The super app is the envy of tech companies everywhere, and from what I’ve been told by others, it would be hard to live in a major Chinese city without using it.

That’s a level of ubiquity any super app would like to achieve, and that probably includes Grab. Today’s featured story dives into an acquisition that could bring Grab closer to that goal.

Today we look at:

• Grab’s acquisition of restaurant booking platform Chope
• The layoff of 80 MoneyHero employees
• Other newsy highlights such as CrowdStrike offering gift cards as an apology for a global IT outage and a Singapore-based crypto project scoring US$11 million in funding.

Premium summary

Grabbing dinner

Image credit: Timmy Loen

Homegrown super app Grab has acquired restaurant reservation platform Chope, according to an internal email seen by The Business Times.

Grab will take over Chope’s operations in Singapore, Indonesia, and Thailand.

• Starter: Chope was founded in 2011 and allows diners to make online reservations for restaurants across Singapore, Jakarta, Bali, Bangkok, Phuket, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. It claims to have more than 13,000 restaurants in its network.
• Main course: Chope recorded revenue of about US$22.7 million in 2022, up 31% from the year before. However in December of 2022, it laid off 24% of its employees from its offices across the region.
• Dessert: With the acquisitionGrab plans to cross-sell Chope’s services to its merchant-partners. In the email seen by The Business Times, Grab’s head of deliveries, Ngiam Xin Wei, said the deal would boost the super app’s omnicommerce strategy.

Read more: Grab feeds F&B appetite with Chope acquisition

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