Aditi Sharma, head of Investments and Programmes of Grab Ventures

Grab Ventures, the venture arm of Southeast Asian ride-hailing giant Grab, has a vision to “nurture the next generation of tech unicorns in Southeast Asia” through its flagship scale-up programme Grab Ventures Velocity and strategic investments.

A unicorn refers to a tech start-up company valued at US$1 billion or more.

Speaking at the recent Viet Nam Start-up earlier this month, Aditi Sharma, head of investments and programmes, Grab Ventures, said Southeast Asia is an attractive but challenging region for start-ups.

“Southeast Asian countries are diverse in culture, languages, consumer behaviours, policies and regulations. Very few start-ups have managed to scale across the region successfully.”

Grab Ventures was launched in June 2018 with the tagline ‘nurturing the next unicorns of Southeast Asia’, she said.

Grab Ventures aims to build new businesses, not only in-house but also by partnering with start-ups that already have a good business model and are looking for ways to scale up, she said.

“We want to build a healthy eco-system of partners around our users. So we are constantly seeking quality partners in the eco-system to work with on our everyday superapp vision.

“The biggest benefit of this approach is that we are able to bring a wide variety of services to our customers faster.

“Younger start-ups seeking innovative solutions can now focus their energies on solving the main issue for their users while leveraging Grab’s support and resources to scale up.”

Grab Ventures has launched new ventures in Singapore and Indonesia and announced plans to invest up to $250 million in Indonesia’s tech eco-system over the next three years.

It has launched Grab Ventures Velocity, an accelerator programme focused on growth-stage start-ups, to accelerate the scaling up of participating companies through access to the resources, capabilities and networks of Grab and its programme partners.

The programme provides a blend of pilot market access through Grab’s vast eco-system, mentoring and capability-building opportunities to a well curated bunch of start-ups.

The first batch of Grab Ventures Velocity has been successfully completed. Among more than 500 companies that applied, five stood out and joined the programme: BookMyShow, Helpling, Minutes, Sejasa, and Tueetor.

The five “provide customers with a wide variety of solutions that solve their everyday needs,” Sharma said.

“Through the programme, we have piloted these potential superapp use cases within the Grab app to test the response from Grab users on what they need the most.”

BookMyShow and Tueetor are self-explanatory, Helpling and Sejasa provide home services in Singapore and Indonesia respectively and Minutes is an online barber, salon and spa booking platform.

The outcomes from the first batch of Grab Ventures Velocity programme that concluded in January have been very encouraging.

“Some of these start-ups achieved more than 70 per cent growth through Grab Ventures Velocity pilots,” Sharma said.

Grab Ventures has just started accepting applications for the second batch, with a focus on two programme tracks.

The first track is Empowering Farmers: seeking start-ups with innovative solutions to bring more affordable and fresh groceries to Grab users and merchant partners like restaurants and small grocery stores.

The second is Empowering Small Businesses: seeking start-ups with innovative solutions that can either improve incomes, simplify operations or reduce costs for small businesses like restaurants and small grocery stores.

Grab Ventures is also planning to launch the third batch of Grab Ventures Velocity.

Grab Ventures has set a goal of eventually creating 100 million gig economy entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia.

Sharma, who leads Grab Ventures’ investment programmes, has 12 years of experience in various roles at tech companies and serving tech clients.

Founded in 2012, Grab is Southeast Asia’s highest value unicorn at an estimated $14 billion, according to CB Insights.

Currently operating in eight countries and 209 cities, Grab has more than 4,000 employees, all with the same goal: digitising and empowering Southeast Asia.

Grab has expanded beyond transportation to include financial services, food delivery and logistics, and seeks to create jobs and empower micro-entrepreneurs across the region.

With a vision to become the everyday superapp in the region, it offers more than 640 million consumers a suite of services for their daily needs. — VNS