Grab Will Get IDR 44.5 Trillion Fresh Funds From Jack Ma

Online motorcycle taxi drivers (Afif Kusuma / Unsplash)

JAKARTA - Jack Ma's company, Alibaba, is reportedly about to disburse fresh funds to a ride-hailing service from Singapore, Grab. The amount of funds to be disbursed is around 3 billion United States (US) dollars or equivalent to Rp.44.5 trillion.

According to a Bloomberg report, Tuesday, September 15, Alibaba will be the sole investor in the funding, and these funds will be spent on acquiring a portion of the Grab shares held by Uber Technologies Inc.

Uber is known to have around 27.5 percent of shares in Grab, as an agreement made by the two companies in 2018. At that time, Uber left the Southeast Asian market and its business in the region was sold to Grab.

Grab CEO and Co-Founder Anthony Tan also agreed to pay Uber around 2 billion US dollars, equivalent to Rp 29.7 trillion, if the company does not go public (IPO) in 2023.

For information, Alibaba's funding report is only a few days after the news that Gojek and Grab have continued merger talks with SoftBank's insistence, but what kind of negotiations are not known until now.

Grab, which is estimated to have a valuation of $ 14 billion and considers SoftBank Group Corp as one of its backers, it has expanded into financial services, food delivery and mobile payments over the past few years. In June, Grab announced a 5 percent reduction in staff numbers due to cutting costs amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

If Alibaba's investment is successful, it will likely become China's biggest e-commerce giant's biggest deal in Southeast Asia after spending $ 4 billion to take control and grow business over Singapore-based Lazada.