Grab Ventures Velocity returns with its third cohort

Grab Ventures Velocity (GVV) has returned this year with its third cohort, inviting more post-seed Southeast Asian startups to accelerate through access to Grab’s ecosystem.

Photo credit: Grab

GVV is the scale-up program for startups from Grab Ventures, the startup’s investment and venture building arm. The latter was launched in 2018 with a vision to build and nurture the next generation of tech leaders in Southeast Asia.

The big theme of GVV Batch 3 is “enabling micro-entrepreneurs.” It has two tracks: First, GVV is looking for startups that can give value-added services and solutions for food small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to help grow their businesses by reducing costs or simplifying operations. Second, Grab is targeting startups that disrupt the logistics industry with innovations in the warehousing and trucking spaces.

One common problem faced by SMEs is the lack of resources to speed up daily operations and boost business growth, which is why GVV wants to find startups that can help them tackle such challenges. “SMEs need to manage their businesses more effectively in order to achieve better profits. This has encouraged us to choose supply chain logistics and business management solutions for restaurant owners to be our main focus for GVV Batch 3, which is also in line with the government’s efforts to advance SMEs,” said Grab Indonesia managing director Neneng Goenadi, at a press event in Jakarta today.

Coinciding with the launch of GVV Batch 3, Grab Ventures also signed a strategic memorandum of understanding with BRI Ventures to create new joint initiatives, aiming to further support the development of Indonesia’s startup community.

In a recent interview with KrAsia, Chris Yeo, head of Grab Ventures said that Grab is looking for startups that have a clear business model and path to profitability. The startups should also be relevant and benefit Grab’s customer base, passengers, and drivers, as well as SMEs from its GrabFood and GrabPay ecosystems.

GVV has worked with 15 companies from its previous two batches, including Indonesian agritech startup TaniHub and insurtech platform Qoala. Registration for the third batch is now open, and as part of the program, selected startups will go through a series of mentoring sessions led by industry experts and they will also able to test their pilot product in the Grab platform and access its large customer base.

This report was first published on KrAsia.