Ride-hailing service Grabs billion dollar funding

Southeast Asian ride-hailing company Grab says it is on track to raise a massive $2.5 billion in fresh funding to continue its supercharged expansion in the region.

Notably, one of the main backers is Chinese ride hailing giant Didi Chuxing, which beat out Uber in mainland China.

Grab operates private car, motorcycle and carpooling services in seven Southeast Asian countries with more than one million drivers.

Within the region it is the clear market leader although Uber is slowly chipping away at its dominance.

Uber is signalled its intent to push further into the ASEAN region as a major growth area after its failure in China.

Didi Chuxing and Japan’s SoftBank Group between them have invested about $2 billion in Grab with $500 million coming from other investors.

That will give Grab a valuation of about $6 billion, Reuters reports.

Grab has already started to diversify into fintech.

It has established GrabPay, which aims to offer electronic money transfers and banking services.

"With their support, Grab will achieve an unassailable market lead in ride-sharing, and build on this to make GrabPay the payment solution of choice for Southeast Asia," said Anthony Tan, group chief executive officer.