Grab announced that it has acquired Uber’s Southeast Asia operations on March 26. Grab will integrate Uber’s ridesharing and food delivery business in the region into Grab’s existing multimodal transportation and fintech platform.
As part of the acquisition, Uber will take a 27.5% stake in Grab and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi will join Grab’s board. Anthony Tan, Group CEO and Co-founder, Grab said, “We are humbled that a company born in Southeast Asia has built one of the largest platforms that millions of consumers use daily and provides income opportunities to over five million people. Today’s acquisition marks the beginning of a new era. The combined business is the leader in platform and cost efficiency in the region. Together with Uber, we are now in an even better position to fulfill our promise to outserve our customers. Their trust in us as a transport brand allows us to look towards the next step as a company: improving people’s lives through food, payments and financial services.” Tan Hooi Ling, Cofounder, Grab said, “We will rapidly and efficiently expand GrabFood into all major Southeast Asia countries in the next quarter. We’re going to create more value for our growing ecosystem of consumers, drivers, agents – and now merchants and delivery partners. GrabFood will also be another great use case to drive the continued adoption of GrabPay mobile wallet and support our growing financial services platform.” “This deal is a testament to Uber’s exceptional growth across Southeast Asia over the last five years. It will help us double down on our plans for growth as we invest heavily in our products and technology to create the best customer experience on the planet. We’re excited to take this step with Anthony and his entire team at Grab, and look forward to Grab’s future in Southeast Asia,” said Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber.
To minimise disruption, Grab and Uber are working together to promptly migrate Uber drivers and riders, Uber Eats customers, merchant partners and delivery partners to the Grab platform. The Uber app will continue to operate for two weeks to ensure stability for Uber drivers. Uber Eats will run until the end of May, after which Uber delivery and restaurant partners will move to the GrabFood platform.
