Ambyar's Revenue, Grab Expects Fresh Funds From Investors

JAKARTA - A ride-hailing company from Malaysia, Grab, claims to have been hit hard by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic which of course has hit almost all over the world. Grab said, this condition is like a prolonged winter for company performance.

Launching Reuters, Wednesday, May 20, to deal with these conditions, Grab Co-Founder Tan Hooi Ling revealed that he was preparing a strategy to face the worst possible result of COVID-19. One of them is expecting fresh funds from its investor, Softbank.

"Grab supported by Softbank is preparing for the possibility of a long winter," said Ling.

Ling also said that the company's main revenue was its online motorcycle taxi service, which has now fallen drastically due to regional quarantine and physical distancing policies. Although food and parcel delivery services have improved. So, overall income is lower than the period before COVID-19 happened.

"So far, we are preparing for the worst case scenario, which has the potential to be a very long winter," added Ling.

Last month, Grab CEO Anthony Tan said the pandemic was the biggest single crisis affecting the performance of the eight-year-old company, as indicated by the volatile business volume in several countries.

However, even though Grab expects fresh funds from its investors. Not long ago, Softbank Group, which is also a Tokopedia investor, was reported to have had quite a surprising loss.

The Japanese company reported a net loss in fiscal 2019 of US $ 8.9 billion or around Rp. 133.5 trillion, which was, of course, due to the impact of the spread of coronavirus and its problematic investment in co-working space startup WeWork.

Softbank certainly did not expect to have a bigger loss than the company predicted which previously estimated a net loss of only 8.4 billion in the 2019 fiscal year ending in March 2020. At that time, management reminded investors of the deteriorating market conditions.

"If the corona pandemic continues, it will create uncertainty in the investment business for the next fiscal year," explained Softbank in an official statement as quoted by AFP.