Grab doubles Indonesia revenue, claims it’s part of the ‘largest payments ecosystem’

Photo credit: Grab

When Grab revealed this week that it had netted US$1.45 billion in funding from SoftBank – bringing its ongoing series H round to US$4.5 billion – it treated journalists to a smorgasbord of stats, intended to illustrate its rapid rise and future growth prospects.

Grab’s chief rival Go-Jek did much the same thing last month when it announced the close of its series F round, which is estimated to have pulled in US$2 billion.

Here, Tech in Asia gives a breakdown of the latest numbers to come out of Grab, and compares them to Go-Jek’s vital statistics. Note that many of the stats cannot be independently verified.

Regional growth

In a statement released at the time of the SoftBank announcement, Grab said that:

• Its region-wide revenue doubled between March and December last year.
• GrabExpress’s instant and same-day delivery volumes grew by more than 3x over the same period.
• Monthly transactions via its Grab Financial platform – including GrabPay – grew by almost 5x.

Grab’s takeover of Uber’s regional operations took place at the start of the timeframe in question. But while the acquisition may account for some of that growth, Uber was quitting markets it was losing ground in.

Grab claims to have spent time and resources building its own tech around the food-delivery markets it inherited from Uber.

“Our regional revenue growth is a result of an organic expansion of our different business verticals and market share growth in our key markets,” said a Grab spokesperson, speaking to Tech in Asia. “[GrabFood is now] in 199 cities across eight countries and our food revenue grew 45 times. We also rolled out GrabExpress in more countries last year and expanded the number of cities we were in for transport steadily month-on-month.”

Research firm Kantar TNS found that as of January this year, Grab was the first-choice ride-hailing service for 86 percent of its survey respondents in Vietnam, compared to 6 percent who named Go-Jek. The study also found GrabFood to be the most often-used food delivery service in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, being cited by 68 percent of survey respondents as their provider of choice.

Grab does not provide exact figures for its businesses.

See: After 10x growth last year, food delivery will be Grab’s main battlefront in 2019

Go-Jek entered Vietnam (as Go-Viet) last August, and beta-launched in Singapore in November and Thailand (as Get) in December. That means it may be too early to properly appraise its position in those markets.

However, the Jakarta-based company claims that Go-Viet captured a 40 percent share of Vietnam’s two-wheeled transportation market within three months of launch. It also claims that Go-Viet became “the leading player among comparable food-delivery services within only two months of launch.”

Doubling-down on Indonesia

Indonesia payments tie-ups