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Uber dominates the ride-share business in almost every market it enters. But not in Southeast Asia. That’s Grab territory.
Under CEO Anthony Tan’s leadership, Grab owns an overwhelming majority of the markets for ride-sharing, according to the company. And that has allowed him to raise $2 billion this year from players like its Chinese ally Didi Chuxing and SoftBank Capital. That round of funding, the largest in the history of Southeast Asia, valued the company at $6 billion.
That new funding has Uber questioning the economics of operating in Southeast Asia — Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi recently called the market “over-capitalized” and said it wouldn’t be profitable any time soon.
While Grab expects to continue to expand across the region, part of that infusion of cash will be distributed to its growing mobile wallets business, GrabPay. The company has managed to leverage the lack of credit card penetration in the region and its high usership to create a mobile payments platform that works for more than transportation. Most recently, Grab announced customers could use GrabPay to pay for food at restaurants in Singapore.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
