Grab has evolved from a simple taxi-booking app to Southeast Asia's leading super app, providing seamless solutions for transportation, food delivery, and financial services. As a decacorn and the first tech startup from Southeast Asia to go public on NASDAQ, Grab has successfully navigated the complex regional landscape to create an essential platform that serves millions daily across multiple countries.
In Southeast Asia, changing consumer expectations have created demand for convenient on-demand services, particularly in transportation, food delivery, and financial services. Traditional taxi services in the region were often unreliable and considered unsafe, especially for women, while financial inclusion remained a significant challenge with large portions of the population lacking access to banking services.
The rise of smartphone adoption across Southeast Asia created an opportunity for digital platforms to address these gaps. The region's unique characteristics-densely populated urban centers, relatively low car ownership, and high motorbike usage-made it particularly suitable for a tailored platform that could connect users with transportation and other essential services.
Grab was founded to address these challenges by creating a technology platform that could initially make taxi rides safer and more reliable, before expanding to serve additional consumer needs. By building a super app that combines various services within a single platform, Grab created an ecosystem that serves multiple customer segments while creating income opportunities for drivers, delivery partners, and merchants across Southeast Asia.
Grab was founded in 2012 by Anthony Tan and Tan Hooi Ling, who met as classmates at Harvard Business School. The idea originated from a conversation about the Malaysian taxi system, which at the time was notorious for being unsafe, particularly for women10. Despite coming from one of Malaysia's wealthiest families in the automotive industry, Anthony Tan saw an opportunity to solve a pressing regional problem rather than joining his family business10.
In 2011, the duo drafted a business plan for a taxi-booking mobile app focused on safety and reliability, which they submitted to a startup competition at Harvard Business School. After winning the competition and receiving $25,000 as a grant, along with Tan's personal capital, they launched "MyTeksi" in Malaysia in 2012814.
The early days of the company were marked by hands-on efforts to recruit drivers. The founding team would personally visit locations where taxi drivers congregated, such as airports and food centers. As one early employee recalled, "One of us would be pitching to the driver like what what is crap about and the other guy will be like taking down all his details and basically signing signing him up at the end of 5 minutes"17.
The company rebranded from MyTeksi to GrabTaxi in 2013 as it began expanding beyond Malaysia to other Southeast Asian countries14. In 2014, with an investment from Temasek (Singapore's government investment fund), Grab moved its headquarters from Malaysia to Singapore14. By 2016, the company had simplified its brand name to "Grab" as it continued to diversify its service offerings beyond taxi bookings8.
Grab has developed a comprehensive ecosystem of services accessible through its super app platform, consisting of multiple verticals that address different customer needs:
Grab's original service line includes a variety of transportation options:
As Grab expanded beyond transportation, it launched multiple delivery services: