Reportedly Examining a Merge with Gojek, Grab Raises IDR 4.2 Trillion

On-demand service provider, Grab, is said to have received funding of more than US$ 300 million or around IDR 4.2 trillion, led by Hanwha Asset Management South Korea. This issue arose when Gojek was reportedly reviewing the merger with Tokopedia, after previously being rumored with Grab.

“Grab’s financial line, namely the Grab Financial Group, has just received funding of US$ 300 million,” said a source from The Information quoted from e27, last weekend (8/1). Grab Financial Group was founded in 2018. This company provides micro-investment services, payments, insurance, and loans for merchants, consumers and drivers.

The Grab subsidiary was said to have sought funding since early 2020. At that time, it was reported that fresh funds would be used to strengthen the brand so that it could operate independently. The news emerged when Gojek was reportedly reviewing the merger with Tokopedia.

This was after previously mentioned that the Indonesian decacorn had regular discussions with Grab regarding consolidation since the middle of last year. Gojek and Grab reportedly agreed to form a joint entity last December. However, a Bloomberg source said that the agreement talks between the two decacorns were deadlocked.

Grab CEO Anthony Tan continues to resist pressure from SoftBank Group Corp to hand over some control over the joint entity to Gojek. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son reportedly lost his temper due to the lengthy discussion on the merger of the two decacorns.

Softbank is called Supporting the Merger between Gojek and Tokopedia

“Now Son supports the merger between Gojek and Tokopedia,” said a Bloomberg source quoted last week (5/1). SoftBank is an investor of Grab and Tokopedia. Bloomberg estimates that the combined valuation of Gojek and Grab will reach US$ 25 billion. Meanwhile, Gojek and Tokopedia have an estimated valuation of US$ 18 billion.

As a decacorn, Gojek’s valuation is more than US$ 10 billion. Meanwhile, Tokopedia received fresh funds from Google and Temasek at the end of last year, so the valuation is said to be close to the decacorn scale.

e27 reports that Grab and Tokopedia have surpassed the series H funding stage. This means that there is less room for the next round of raising, apart from offering initial shares or IPOs.

“However, when compared to Grab which raised US$ 10.1 billion to date, Tokopedia with US$ 2.8 billion looks much more agile and leaves enough room for higher valuations at the IPO stage,” said Morphosis Managing Partner. Singapore-based Capital Partners, Sergei Filippov, quoted from e27, last weekend (8/1).

Tokopedia has raised US$ 2.8 billion in several rounds, so its current valuation is around US$ 7 billion-US$ 8 billion. This means that the investment value of investors will be 2.5 to 2.75 times. Meanwhile, Grab has raised US$ 10.1 billion, with a valuation of around US$ 15 billion.

This means, the investment value has increased by 1.48x. “This is why I believe that the potential merger of Tokopedia and Gojek has more business instincts and provides better market value,” said Filippov.

Investment, Loan and Credit Services

Grab’s fintech service, Grab Financial Group (GFG), has issued financial services in the form of investment, loans and credit. The three new GFG products are AutoInvest, consumer loans through a third-party loan platform, and credit services so that users can buy goods immediately and pay later.

However, a series of new financial service products for Grab users are only available for users in Singapore. These three products are not yet available for users in Indonesia. For AutoInvest, Singaporean users can get how much they want to invest per Grab transaction, starting from US$ 1 with a return of around 1.8 percent per year.

Since launching the consumer insurance business last year, Reuben admitted that GFG has had 13 million insurance policies issued since April 2019. In fact, GFG has become one of the largest digital insurance distributors in Southeast Asia for its insurance partner, Chubb.