Meet the growing ranks of the Grab mafia

From its humble beginnings as Malaysian taxi-booking mobile app MyTeksi to becoming the multinational super app it is today, Grab has come far in its journey as a Southeast Asian tech titan.

However, Grab is still far from its peak. Despite going public in a record deal with a special purpose acquisition company last December, the Singapore-headquartered company had seen its stock price plunge by nearly 80% to a low of US$2.71 apiece by April 26, 2022. Widening operating losses and rising fuel prices are among the many headwinds that the company currently grapples with.

But Grab isn’t resting on its laurels – nor are its former employees-turned founders. Former executives and managers of the super app now helm notable tech companies such as BukuWarung, Igloo, and NextBillion. Grab’s next big break could lie among them.

Tech in Asia previously looked at the Grab mafia network in a report in 2021 that also included peers from Gojek.

As the Grab mafia expands, this new analysis will highlight key trends and capture its growing influence in Southeast Asia’s startup ecosystem.

Grabbing their next opportunity

In our updated analysis, we look at 73 former full-time Grab employees picked randomly from LinkedIn – all of them are founders and co-founders of firms.

Out of the 64 companies in our sample, 51.6% were founded between 2020 to 2022. The uptick in the number of startups founded by alumni began in 2018, the year Grab acquired former archrival Uber’s Southeast Asia operations.

The growth in Grab alumni founders noticeably slowed in 2021. It’s unclear what caused the slowdown, but one reason could be that many Grab executives stayed on at the super app, expecting large gains from the company’s public listing that year.

Though the company’s losses widened 33% to US$3.6 billion in 2021 from US$2.7 billion in 2020, Grab’s co-founder and group CEO said that 2021 was Grab’s “strongest year yet.”

The vast majority – close to 90% – of its alumni founders in Tech in Asia’s sample come from Southeast Asia.

Nearly half of the alumni startups in our sample are either unfunded or did not disclose any funding. Among those funded, most alumni startups are in the series A or series B stages.

A middle manager’s community

Punching above their weight

More hands to grab onto?