Uncovering Southeast Asia’s hidden Grab and Gojek mafia

This is the latest version of the article that was published on April 16, 2021. We’ve added more alumni members to the visual and table.

With Grab officially announcing on April 13 its biggest global SPAC listing in the US, which could value the company at US$39.6 billion, a generation of entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia has much to celebrate. Grab’s listing can potentially fuel its alumni network, which has already spearheaded a wave of notable tech startups in the region. The same thing goes for Grab’s rival Gojek.

“I really think this is the golden generation of people who can capture returns from these upcoming IPOs and reinvest back into the startup ecosystem,” says Mohandass Kalaichelvan, who co-founded cloud payment software Spenmo in 2019 after spending more than a year at Grab as a regional strategy lead.

For this visual story, Tech in Asia has tracked the companies that ex-Grab and ex-Gojek employees have founded following their departure from these tech decacorns. Unlike the Lazada mafia, which we have chronicled previously, companies founded by Grab and Gojek alumni appear to spread across various verticals, a testament to the tech firms’ super-app status.

See also: The growing Lazada mafia 

Some of the startups that have come out of the Grab and Gojek alumni network have raised significant funding, such as AwanTunai, BukuWarung, Endowus, Horangi and Igloo. In many instances, ex-employees went on to start a company together. Examples for Grab include Evo Holdings, Momos and NextBillion.AI. For Gojek, there are AwanTunai, Pinhome, Sampingan, and StrongBee.

Inspiration often comes from seeing pain points while working for either of the two ride-hailing firms. For example, Kalaichelvan started Spenmo to address problems that GrabPay wallet wasn’t able to solve for merchants: While they can get paid through QR code, they can’t pay suppliers and vendors directly. Spenmo wants to help mid-sized regional companies to track spending on company cards and automate all invoice payments and bank transfers.

Founded in 2019, Spenmo, which now operates in Singapore and Indonesia, has already raised US$2 million in seed funding from Y Combinator, Flash Ventures, Rocket Internet, Iterative Capital, and the XA Network, which comprises ex-Googlers and executives from leading tech companies such as Facebook and Netflix.

“Being at Grab made me realize that it’s possible to start a company,” Kalaichelvan tells Tech in Asia. “The biggest lesson learned for me was how (Grab CEO and co-founder) Anthony Tan was able to align the team behind a really big mission and execute continously.”

Kalaichelvan says he often seeks advice from connections at Grab on matters such as navigating the Indonesian market. Having worked at Grab also makes it easier to raise capital, he adds. “The brand name is really good.”

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