Insurance & Indonesia: What Grab’s New US$1.46 Bil Brings to The Table
by Fintech News Singapore March 6, 2019Grab has been accused of being the most capitalised startup in Southeast Asia’s history, and with this recent closing of a whopping Series H we find it hard to disagree. Grab opened this round round since June last year, and at its close, sees participation from quite a few big names: returning investor Softbank Vision Fund, Toyota Motor Corporation, Oppenheimer Funds, Hyundai Motor Group, Booking Holdings, Microsoft Corporation, Ping An Capital, and Yamaha Motor.
With Softbank Vision Fund’s injection, the total financing secured in Grab’s Series H totals up to over US$4.5 billion (SG$6.11 billion).
As usual, Grab expressed interest in furthering its “super app vision” in Southeast Asia, which refers to their efforts into a multipurpose app—for ride-hailing, financial services, deliveries, food delivery and even media content.
Grab revealed a few things that it would like to embolden with the new fund injection; like expanding on its existing verticals, and rolling out new services that it announced in 2018 like on-demand video, in-app digital healthcare, mobile insurance, and hotel bookings. Grab also mentioned that it plans on investing a significant portion into its Indonesian market.
Out of the many plans that Grab has with the funding, here’s two things we’re interested in:
Doubling Down on Insurtech
Slated for a mid-2019 launch in Singapore, Grab announced a joint venture with ZhongAn, one of China’s insurtech giants to launch a digital insurance distribution platform for Southeast Asia.
They will start out by offering drivers’ insurance to its drivers in Singapore, but the overall goal is to offer a variety of mobile insurance products for underinsured or uninsured populations.
Another affected party could be Ping An, without coincidence, one of the investors to Grab’s new round.
In August last year, Ping and and Grab announced that they will establish a joint venture company, looking to offer a variety of integrated medical services like AI-assisted medical consultations, medicine delivery and appointment bookings through the online platform.
Driving Competition in Go-Jek’s Home Turf, Indonesia
In particular, Grab plans to invest a significant portion of fresh proceeds in Indonesia, where company claims that its revenue has doubled in 2018.
Grab gave particular attention to growing GrabFood and GrabExpress in the region, though it did also mention that it is part of the payments ecosystem in Indonesia thanks to partnerships with OVO and Tokopedia.
Seeing as Grab is in the middle of a stiff Southeast Asian competition with Indonesia-based Go-Jek, we won’t be surprised if Grab has aspirations towards giving the Indonesian platform a run for its money; especially since Go-Jek has also expressed similar “super app” interest with Go-Pay at its center.
Featured image via Grab Thailand
