Transcripts For BLOOMBERG Bloomberg Markets Americas 2024071

Transcripts For BLOOMBERG Bloomberg Markets Americas 20240713

Offers not just rides, but health care, payments, hotel booking, plane tickets and more. We met up with anthony tan in seattle, washington where they set up a new office to grab some of americas top tech talents. Joining me today on studio 1. 0, anthony tan and hoo ling tan, cofounders of grab. Lets start at the beginning. You met at Harvard Business school. How did you two find each other . The first year we were in Business School we were in different classes. The only times we met was when we were looking for asian food. It was only the second year we got to know each other because we both serendipitously took the same course called business at the base of the pyramid. Over that semester i discovered , this is the hardest working guy very and i was so glad he sat next to me because i was constantly looking at his notes. She did not do homework. She copied my homework. Emily are you ok with him saying that . It is the truth. Everyone knows that. [laughter] emily you came from a big auto agency in malaysia. Did you know of him . I knew of his family, not him personally. To be honest, when i first discovered he was their son, i was not keen on getting to know him too much better because i had a conception around not families, they are not always hardworking or necessarily the nicest people. Emily are you ok with her saying that . Yes, it is not too far from the truth. At one point, you know, i would imagine a long time ago i have been in those moments where i have not been the most empathetic person. I think over time learning how to pay some of my own school fees, do my own things, i worked in a factory, worked on the ground assembling cars, going to the bus at 1 30 in the morning with teammates assembling cars. Those experiences have molded me in, life lessons. And of them by the time i got to hps, thank god i was more grownup. Emily your grandfather was the founder. Your father is the ceo and you were working in marketing. Anthony first i was actually supply chain. So i ran supply chain from parts assembly, making sure all the parts were coming from all across the world, making sure it gets assembled nicely through highquality standards. Emily how about you . Hoo ling i grew up in a typical middleclass family. My father was a civil engineer, my mother a stock worker. Stockbroker. To be honest, that is what you would expect any other family to go through. Public schooling in malaysia. I only picked up english very well when i went to undergrad in england. Emily tell me how you get to hps, you meet each other, how is grab born . Hoo ling through conversation. Going back to the class that we sat next to each other at, it was about how to build sustainable businesses that have double and triple bottom lines, whether it is in health care cpg. , we learned so much. It is because of those great cases that sparked our mutual interests. My terrible experiences taking taxis in a very unsafe environment in malaysia that we realized the mobile revolution that was happening could potentially unlock a problem that many had tried to solve before but had not successfully done so. Emily this is a couple years after uber launched. How much was uber a blueprint . Anthony it was very different, wasas black cars, it everyone can have a private driver. Do we make sure that a woman like ling has the best and safest experience in an affordable way . Hoo ling if you were to google the worlds worst taxis 10 years ago, the top hit would have been kuala lumpur, malaysias capital. That is the environment we grew up in. The moment i became an adult, i was working late. I had no alternatives. I could not drive home, i would fall asleep because it was late at night. My mom and i developed a manual gps tracking system. That was during the nokia days, no smartphone or gps tracking. And i would literally text her the car plates, name of the driver and the license of the taxi i got into. And i would text whenever i hit major milestones, landmarks that we would preagree on so she , would know i was 15 minutes away, seven minutes away or just around the corner. Every single night she would sleep in front of the couch, something that looks like this, waiting for me. Emily you launch. At what point do you realize this will be big . Anthony we never thought this would be, it is a miracle. I will be up front. That where we are emily your mom was your first vc . Anthony exactly. We put in everything we had. I do not think we ever imagined it would be the company it is today. Emily talk to me about the early days growing the company. Anthony it was really rough. We would set up a table, a plastic table, that probably cost two u. S. Dollars right next to monsoon drains beside gas stations because taxis would come by gas stations. So we would say, hey give us a , shot. We will give you some rice or breakfast, a little drink that cost . 20. And if they did not have a spokehone, we flew and we with some oems to subsidize phones for us. We could not afford smartphones. Whether it was singapore, jakarta, singapore, went window by window, knocking. Whether they were lining up at the airport or gas station, we were convincing them one by one. Dara came in and said look, guys. It does not make sense to continue having this street fight. Emily by 2014 you expended to you had expanded to the philippines, singapore, thailand, vietnam. What was it like getting to these Different Countries . Hoo ling folks who like ourselves knew the Different Countries we spent time in growing up and loved to start operations. Emily what about local lawmakers, regulators . I mean, we have seen Ride Sharing Companies run into red tape around the world. Some people were not too happy. Anthony there is a process where Tech Companies think you should go ahead and shoot and ask for forgiveness later. At least in asia. Again, because i came from a Family Business that really and get abuild license to build a factory, we understood that you have to walk that journey with our garment partners. Emily is this the antiuber way of doing things . Hoo ling i would not say that. It is a very grab way. And i think the both of us grew up in an environment where we wanted to solve a problem together with others. , we it the Asian Heritage are generally more collaborative. It is the way our family teaches us to work with each other. It never struck us to take an alternative approach. We didnt want to say we know better, but follow us. Emily in thailand ride sharing is still illegal but you operate in a gray area there . Anthony we work very closely with the Thai Government and many other governments to find ways to serve the people better. Whether it is formalized or not we focus on serving the people. Emily what is grab today . It is not just a ride hailing app, it is more. Tell me about the super app vision. Hoo ling after six years of building this with the people of Southeast Asia, we were able to start working together with uber as partners. That is when we acquired southeast assets. Emily uber was struggling in Southeast Asia. Anthony uber had a great campaign. Ondemand uber ice cream. First of all, we did not think that would fly as well because one, it is very hot in the region, it melts. Getting slushy ice cream is not fun. What we said was, what do singaporeans, malaysians, love . The king of fruits, the durian. In over 30 days we sold 25 tons of the fruit making us the , biggest sellers of durian. Emily uber does not give up easily. What happened, how did you end up buying their ride hailing business . Anthony it makes a difference who is in the drivers seat. I think that number one, we both had tremendous respect for each other. Two, dara came in and said look, guys. It doesnt make sense to continue having this street fight, literally city by city, or does it make sense that one plus one equals 11 . That was when the conversation, obviously it was very secretive dara and i met away from the , office, away from media. It was just me and him in a private room. We started Building Trust that way. And we both agreed that was the best outcome for both companies. Emily uber has 20 of the grab. How much do you collaborate and how much is Dara Khosrowshahi involved in grab . Board. he is on the obviously he is quite busy as you can imagine, but he has been friend in many ways. We bounce ideas off of each other. We have toyota on our board and softbank. Emily do you worry about giving away competitive secrets to the ceos of big ride hailers in other countries . Anthony no, there is a noncompete with us as long as they are shareholders. Emily and you have no plans to expand outside Southeast Asia . Anthony no. Emily you do have offices in seattle, which is where we are. Any plans to expand in the u. S. . Anthony nope. Emily anything that would change that . Anthony nope. Emily why not . Hoo ling we have an r d center in seattle, malaysia and bangkok. U. S. , china and india great tech talent. Emily lets talk about the super app. This is so much more than a ride hailing business. What else you are delivering food. What else do you plan to do . Hoo ling we want to create a Technology Platform that can literally house multiple digital ecosystems and economies. Do foode today we delivery, parcel delivery, and payments in financial services. We now have multiple amazing partners helping us with things like health care. Care, we have Amazing Technology from china to help us enable more folks to get Health Services and products easily in Southeast Asia. We also have a partnership with happy fresh, where they do grocery deliveries with us. We also have partnerships with video and content players and other things in the works that you will hear about including booking. Com. Now if you open the app in , singapore and asia you can book hotels, airplane tickets because we have been able to partner with these folks to enable services in a matter of months. Emily you do have a competitor in your region, which is catching up in many of these businesses and also claims they are a super app. How much of a threat is that competition . Hoo ling the thing we always look at is what our customers need. And what our customers are saying. The good news is since year one, we have been the only regional player. Therefore, the only regional super app. Clearly the customers are choosing us. Emily the gojek founder has said not nice things about you. He said that you were actually classmates at harvard, i believe. The founder of gojek said, excuse me, you spend the first years of your life copying uber and the next years of your life copying gojek. What is the response . Anthony he likes drama. Look, i respect him. We both do, we respect him and the company. And i think, again, how i see it we are ine are look, we are in it for the right reasons. I cannot speak for others. We believe we want to serve east asia and societies and there is no other reason why we are here. For us it has always been about serving. Whatever our competitors say, it does not matter. It is noise. Hoo ling what i can share is that both regions are equally looking at Southeast Asia as huge potential growth areas. Emily you run a huge platform right now and on a huge platform , bad things can happen, accidents unfortunately happen. One of our bloomberg reporters got in an accident in a grab and she wrote about this and said the driver left her and she was badly injured. You actually went to visit her at home. Anthony that is right. And she is not the only person. I remember meeting a driver once , he fell off a motorbike and i went to visit. Of course it was a moment that was very emotional for both of us, seeing her daughter, her family, going to the house. And i think for us, can we do more . For sure. Now can we say factually are we the safest alternative out there . Yes. Have we built even more features after that . Yes. We have tripled down if not quadrupled down. We have dedicated tech families that just focus on safety. And right now we can say undoubtedly hand to heart, no one had more safety investments in Southeast Asia asia than we do. Emily she confronted the driver and found out what the were. Uences for him he lost his ability to drive for grab. He was fined. She wrote down what she felt to the accident cost. She said her vertebral artery. Driver, livelihood less expenses. Grab, 20. The refund they have given me after the accident. How does that strike you . Hoo ling both of us spent time to understand what we could have done better, not just from that accident, but many others which could have been prevented or was caused by external circumstances. We are constantly trying to figure out how we can make every preventable accident disappear. Emily what are some of the changes . Hoo ling there is a big need to make sure the drivers who are picking you up are the drivers that have been vetted and verified with history to be good drivers. And what we do with technology is make sure that every time they log into the app they do a selfie verification, facial recognition, to make sure that driver is the right verified driver that is trustworthy and safe. That is one example. Anthony everything we do has to be. And of course, in the case of safety can we do more, should we , have done more . Yes. And of the important part as ceos, cofounders, leadership, is to recognize we make mistakes and just put up your hand and say, i am sorry, i made a mistake. Forgive me and i will keep getting better. Emily lets talk about the money. You raised a lot of money and are trying to raise more. Valuation, billion am i right . Anthony in the ballpark. Emily where are you putting the new money . Anthony it is not just softbank. The first 3 billion was not raised by softbank, it was from toyota to hyundai to booking, to microsoft, oppenheimer. We are very,t very blessed it the global best names one can imagine. Emily why continue to raise money rather than going to the Public Market . Hoo ling because of our ambitions for a super app which , involve a broader set of services for our customers. There needs to be additional innovation and investment. And those are the investments that are partners, they identify the opportunity and they want us to do and are encouraging us to go bigger, bolder and better so we can serve Southeast Asia more consistently. Emily tell me about your relationship with masa . He said you have unlimited capital. Are noti assume you asking for unlimited capital . Anthony no. We are extremely close and we are very blessed to have a personal, mentor, friend and partner in this journey, but i will not right now need that capital or want that today because we have enough capital to invest in what we need today. Emily you recently told me you surpassed 1 billion in revenue last year and are on track to double that this year. Where will growth come from . Hoo ling in terms of countries and regions in Southeast Asia the biggest trajectory and growth is indonesia and we are doubling and tripling down there as well. Emily how far away is profitability . Anthony certain markets and to certain verticals are already profitable. For us it is really important that we build and create more value. It is easy to say you are the most popular app and then chill. Or as opposed to, we are single most popular app, but there are lots of competitors so we need to make sure we deliver more value so we can have them keep keeping us as the single most popular ridehailing app. Emily uber cannot say when it will be profitable and that has been a problem for investors. Are you learning from that . Anthony it is different. It is different. Huber, a majority of its business is ridehailing. Plus food delivery. Lyft as well. The point is we see ourselves as a super app. Emily will grab go public . Anthony right now we have no plans to go ipo. We have no need to go ipo. Again choosing longterm , strategics as part as our tech for good, working in conationbuilding, it is not five months. It is the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years. Naily given the u. S. Chi traded tensions manufacturing , leaving china and moving to Southeast Asia, does grab have a role in that . Is that an opportunity for you . Hoo ling what i can share is that both regions are equally looking at Southeast Asia as huge future potential growth areas. I think that everybody sees Southeast Asia as a region of growth for the future. And it is not shortterm. It is not for the next five years. It will be the next few decades. That is the growth we want to help drive for the rest of the country. Emily we have seen many founding themes fall apart, teams full apart blood on the , floor. You seem to have a great working relationship. How do you maintain that . Hoo ling we have an amazing relationship because we share the foundational value system and passion and vision for what we believe we can contribute back to the region. Andwe know it is unique that is why we cherish it even more. At the same time we also know there are many more opportunities to equally find the same passion. We encourage it and we are helping back in the region. We have launched something, our own accelerated program to help other startups in the region that are trying to do good, trying to find a scale. We are trying to help them as well. We are standing on the shoulders of giants and hoping to give them a boost. Emily it has been a pleasure to interview you both together and see that relationship. Thank you so much. Emily 10 years ago, Travis Kalanick and garrett camp launched uber cab, an elite black car service in san francisco. Within five years, uber had a shortened name and completed one billion rides. Two years after that, the number grew to five billion across 600 cities and 70 countries. It became one of the Fastest Growing startups ever. Services ballooned to cover nearly all modes of transportation carpool, helicopter, even water taxi. But all that growth came with many challenges. Regulators and taxi drivers fiercely protested ubers expansion. This, on top of multiple investigations for deceiving authorities, Price Transparency violations, bribery, and reports of sexual harassment. Investors pushed out kalanick, the once untouchable ceo and founder, and in

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