Singapore-based ride hailing firm Grab is looking to raise more funds from strategic investors after receiving over SGD6.1 billion in the region's largest private financing round.
The president of Grab told Reuters that the company continues to see strong interest from global investors after securing nearly SGD2 billion from Softbank's Vision Fund in a year-long round.
The financing round had started soon after ride-hailing giant Uber surrendered its Southeast Asian operations to Grab in March 2018 after a costly battle, Reuters said in a report. In return, Uber took a 27.5 percent stake in Grab's business.
"We continue to see just a tremendous amount of investor interest around the world, and we may consider upsizing this financing in the future," said Maa, a former SoftBank executive. Maa was instrumental in SoftBank's earlier investments in Grab before joining the startup in 2016. He added that Grab was keen to tie up with more partners that could provide the company with a complementary set of technologies or services that will help expand its offerings.
Grab has been ranked among the top 15 unicorns globally by research firm CB Insights, who cited a valuation of SGD14.9 billion. This was before the announcement of the latest funding from SoftBank.
Maa added that the company is not focused on an IPO, as other sharing economy giants including Uber and Airbnb are looking to list this year. "It is accurate to say we are absolutely not focused on an IPO or an IPO timeline right now. For now, we are all heads down focused on growing the market, growing the business as opposed to a capital markets transaction."
