<article>Singapore-based tech giant Grab will list on the NASDAQ on Thursday.
Its bell-ringing ceremony on the New York-based stock exchange is set for Thursday morning eastern time from 9am to 9:30am (10pm to 10:30pm Singapore time) as the company begins trading.</article>

Singapore-based tech giant Grab will list on the NASDAQ on Thursday.
Its bell-ringing ceremony on the New York-based stock exchange is set for Thursday morning eastern time from 9am to 9:30am (10pm to 10:30pm Singapore time) as the company begins trading.
The company votes for its merger with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Altimeter Growth Corp today (Nov 30).
Its $40-billion listing on the NASDAQ will mark the world’s largest SPAC deal. Grab will receive $4.5 billion through the deal including a $4 billion private investment in public equity.
Founded by Harvard Business School classmates Anthony Tan and Hooi Ling Tan, the Softbank Vision Fund and Temasek-backed company has grown from being a ride-hailing firm in Malaysia to becoming one of Southeast Asia’s largest tech companies that offers a wide range of services including deliveries and financial services. It operates in eight countries across Southeast Asia.
Grab’s public debut comes about four years after rival tech giant Sea Limited listed on the NYSE in October 2017. Indonesia’s GoTo is also set for a listing in early-2022 and has been raising a pre-IPO round.
Founded in 2012, Grab has evolved from being an on-demand ride-hailing to provider to offering multiple services under one app that includes food delivery and mobile payment. The company focuses on Southeast Asian markets. Apart from its headquarters Singapore, it&#8217;s also present in markets such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Cambodia and Myanmar.
Grab&#8217;s net loss stood at $988 million for the three months ending September, against a net loss of $621 million in the same period last year.
The company&#8217;s performance will be closely watched as a benchmark for how other Southeast Asian tech companies could do and be valued at.
A number of Southeast Asian companies such as Indonesia’s Kredivo and Singapore’s PropertyGuru have agreed to go public through the SPAC route in New York over the next year, while others like Ninja Van and Carro have indicated interest in going public in the near future.
The startup ecosystem in Southeast Asia has been bustling with activity. The number of unicorns in the region this year has jumped to more than 20 companies, surpassing the past decade’s total.
A unicorn is a moniker used to describe privately held companies that are valued at $1 billion and above.
While a milestone for the region’s technology sector, Grab’s listing comes at a time when the SPAC boom in the first half of this year has largely died down, and doubts about the viability of companies listing through SPACs continue to remain.
Accountancy problems have plagued electric vehicle startups Nikola and Lordstown Motors, the plunge in stock prices of Hippo and Metromile &#8211; now set to be acquired by Lemonade &#8211; have not helped the SPAC reputation.
Post-merger, Anthony Tan, chief executive officer at Grab, will gain 60.4% of the voting rights on a 2.2% ownership stake. Meanwhile, Hooi Ling Tan and the company&#8217;s president Ming Maa’s voting rights will be held by Anthony Tan.
In contrast, Grab’s largest shareholder Softbank Vision fund will have 7.6% voting rights on an 18.6% stake.
The company started out as a third-party taxi booking app called MyTeksi in its founders’ home country of Malaysia, a place notorious for having unlicensed cabbies who overcharge for their rides.
Through the app, commuters could request a taxi when they needed one, instead of trying to hail for one on the streets. The following year, the company moved into the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore.
In 2014 it moved into Indonesia, pitting itself against Gojek. Grab entered Myanmar and Cambodia in 2017. In April 2014, it secured its first institutional investment of $5 million from Singapore sovereign wealth fund Temasek’s Vertex Ventures. Soon after, Grab moved its headquarters to Singapore.
In May the same year, Grab launched its private-hire service called GrabCar in Singapore and Malaysia – a direct competitor of the taxi drivers they served, and a sign that it was going to take on Uber, which had entered Southeast Asia in 2013.
Going head-to-head with Uber became unsustainable, and in March 2018, Uber agreed to leave the region with a 23% stake in Grab &#8211; its stake has been pared to 16.6% since and will dip to 14.3% after Grab lists.
With Uber’s exit, Grab took over its UberEats food delivery business, launching GrabFood that May.
Grab forayed into the fintech space, thereby introducing its GrabPay wallet in 2017, and launching Grab Financial Group the year after.
In December 2020, Grab scored a digital bank license in Singapore through a partnership with the local blue-chip telco Singtel. Grab will hold a 60% stake in the joint venture. It has applied for a digital bank license in Malaysia and is scouting for banks in Indonesia with its partner Emtek Group.
The company also has an enterprise arm offering fraud detection, advertising, and an upcoming mapping service.

SE Asia's ride-hailing giant Grab to list on NASDAQ on Dec 2

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