What made GRAB so successful?
Grab Holdings Inc., commonly known as Grab, is a Singaporean multinational technology company. Started as an e-hailing company in 2011 to current become a superapp decacorn company into multiple South East Asia countries, Grab delivers food, groceries, and acts as an express connecting everything to the doorstep of users. Grab also have financial services which include a payment platform for secure and seamless cashless payments, Insurance and Investment Services, etc.
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Within their first 10 years in the market, Grab had grew exponentially despite obstacles and challenges in their journey. Have a ride with us to get to know the journey of Grab and its co-founders from the initial stage of the experience.
The Iconic Reference refers to iconic events or elements that resemblance the topics which should be remembered for the betterment of the future; for your business entities.
The Horizon Talk covers 6 elements to each topic in my blogs; includes Overview, MyStory, MyAnalysis, Iconic Reference, Summary and What’s Next.
Horizon is defined as the line at which the earth's surface and the sky appear to meet or it is defined as the limit of a person's knowledge, experience, or interest.
The Horizon Talk
"Our analyses on the failed businesses namely Blockbuster, Nokia, Nikon and others were due to the iconic references for everyone to believe, to understand and to remember it. To make changes before it is too late. But sometimes, some people make the change when it is too late.
GRAB HOLDING INC.
1.0 OVERVIEW
Grab Holdings Inc (GRAB) had been certified as the first Southeast Asia’s “decacorn” – (Decacorn is a start-up with a valuation of over US$10 billion. GRAB was valued at USD14 billion in 2019.
GRAB is now listed at New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) via a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company; Altimeter Growth Corp in 2021. Grab is expected to secure a valuation of nearly US$40billion.
When Anthony Tan and Tan Hooi Ling were studying MBA in Harvard Business School (HBS) in 2011 and they got a second place in HBS New Venture Competition for a business plan of an on-demand business model.
The Grab idea (originally was known as MyTeksi) was mooted out by Anthony Tan; started with a question of “How can I best take care of other people”. Starting from that question, both of them had gone through countless brainstorming sessions and discussions to come out with the MyTeksi app (later rebranded to Grab app).
Despite the current and future challenges that GRAB is having in the market internally or externally, their right mindsets of doing the things will be handled with care will be used to overcome the hurdles and challenges.
My Horizon Talk for this topic deliberates well below for your nice reading.
Being involved with the team for roughly 2 years in the development phase had shown their mindsets and their cultures of doing things, more in My Story section in The Horizon Talk.
So choose to be among the few today.
Reset your mindset to make the difference.
Planning is everything but the mindset is the king of everything.​
2.0 MY STORY
When I was working in Cradle Fund Sdn Bhd (Cradle) as a disbursement manager in 2011, I was handling the MyTeksi idea that was brought up by Anthony Tan and his co-founder; Tan Hooi Ling. Cradle is a Malaysia government’s agency that providing grants for innovative business ideas from ideation stage to commercialization stage. I had witnessed the whole process of how the MyTeksi team had completed the MyTeksi app from the idea stage to a prototype stage [Minimum Viable Product (MVP)] in the CIP150 (Cradle Investment Program 150) phase within a year.
The team had progressed well to pursue to the next level of investments ie commercialization grants and private investments in the next few years.
Since then, they had been flying high in their journey across countries and nations with a few rebranding exercises and diversification strategies.
“Life is too short to learn from your mistakes.
So, learn from others” - Anonymous
The graphic illustration here is a summary of GRAB’s milestones of their first 10 years. They had been growing steadily smooth throughout the countries and the nations; regardless ot the challenges and obstacles that are inevitable. Have a sneak peek of their journey here.
Despite the current challenges of COVID19 pandemic around the world, everyone is effected but life needs to go on for everyone to survive. GRAB’s partner-bikers of GrabFood have been providing delivery services to everyone during this pandemic.
3.0 MY ANALYSIS - What made GRAB so successful?
Based on my observation and analysis, the following 4 elements were discovered on why GRAB is successful and they are growing steadily.
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The right mindset.
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Visionary leadership
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Business model
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Operation Management and Business Governance.
1. THE RIGHT MINDSET
“How can I best take care of other people?”.. this was the question that made Anthony Tan and Tan Hooi Ling came out with a superapp service platform or “The Everyday Everything App”. With the right mindset, they explored, discovered and challenged themselves to provide the best services to the people. Grab Holdings Inc (GRAB) has evolved tremendously within their first 10 years life span.
From that simple question; they had uncovered further questions to be answered by their vision towards building an app to make people’s life more easier:
“Why can’t we have a safer way to hail a ride?”
“Can’t we give drivers better working conditions?”
“What if we could make life just a little bit easier?”
Everything begins inside your mind.
With the right mindset, you will succeed.
Anthony Tan and Tan Hooi Ling spun the idea of building a ride-hailing company, GRAB, while pursuing MBA at Harvard Business School. GRAB was initially conceived as a college project and had bagged US$25,000 in prize money from the pitch contest organised by the school.
Hailed from Malaysia, the duo was aware of the chaotic and unorganised scene the Southeast Asian countries’ transportation sector faced. Moreover, rolling out a ride-hailing service in the region would give them first-mover advantage. Bringing together their knowledge in business administration and general management, the two started jotting down a business plan and built the application with the prize money they won from the pitch contest.
A. Anthony Tan’s experience in transportation industry
Anthony Tan’s roots in the automotive industry run deep – his great grandfather was a taxi driver. Before founding GRAB, Anthony was the Head of Supply Chain and Marketing at Tan Chong Group in Malaysia, where he drove logistics and created brand affinity for the automotive brands under the group.
Anthony Tan was from the transportation industry; a family business environment where his late grandfather; the late Tan Yuet Foh, founder of Tan Chong Motor, was an enterprising taxi driver in Kuala Lumpur. In 1957, Tan Yuet Foh heard news of a visit from the President of Datsun to the newly established Japanese embassy in Malaya. Without the luxury of powerful connections or a means to contact the President, he waited outside the embassy gates for the President's arrival. His perseverance and tenacity was rewarded when the President granted Tan; the franchise rights to Datsun vehicles, and it was said that his words to the President were "Just give me the chance to sell a few cars and I’ll show you what we can do". Tan Yuet Foh later enlisted the help of Tan Kim Hor, and together the Tan brothers formed Tan Chong & Sons Motor Co. Ltd. Nissan/Datsun became the first Japanese marque to be imported and sold officially in Malaysia. The Tan brothers had no prior experience of selling cars, but in their first year of business they sold 39 cars from a shop lot in Jalan Ipoh, Kuala Lumpur.
“Changing your mindset may change the situation”
Dr. Steve Maraboli is a life-changing Speaker,
bestselling Author, and Behavioural Science Academic.
Tan Yuet Foh’s mindset at that time; had changed the situation from being a nobody person to a determined person; waited for the opportunity to meet and to request for a chance to sell the Nissan/Datsun vehicles in Malaysia. Thus, with his determination; Tan Chong & Sons Motor Co. Ltd. had become the first Japanese marque to be imported and sold officially in Malaysia in 1957.
B. The birth of the MyTeksi App in 2011 (later known as Grab App in 2012) from an idea of “the question”.
“Design thinking is a creative problem solving methodology that starts from understanding and addressing human needs”
Nicola Ulibarri
Assistant Professor & Researcher, University of California Irvine
“How can I best take care of other people?”
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Anthony Tan and Tan Hooi Ling
(Founders of GRAB Inc.)
From this question, Anthony Tan and Tan Hooi Ling came out with a superapp service platform or “The Everyday Everything App”. Prior to the establishment of the superapp platform, both of them had gone through the design thinking methodology which applying creative and analytical thinking techniques toward solving the specific problem i.e the question of “How can I best take care of other people”.
2. VISIONARY LEADERSHIP
“Vision is the art of seeing the invisible”
Jonathon Swift
(Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer)
The 1st factor contributing to the success of GRAB is the right mindset, while the second factor is the visionary leadership by both of them. Anthony Tan & Tan Hooi Ling had been driven GRAB to become a successful decacorn company in ASEAN. And they are growing steadily with the supports from its 5,000 plus employees and 710,000 plus partner-drivers throughout the countries. Revenue per employee ratio was US$110,000 per employee in the year 2018 which translated into each employee was contributing US$110,000 to the company. The numbers kept growing with the efficiency and the effectiveness in their operations.
They had envisioned that GRAB’s business model is replicable for other vertical or horizontal services or products of GRAB in the future into the other parts of the world for diversification and expansion strategies.
GRAB has been pursuing “super app’ ambitions for a number of years now. Since 2018, the region’s most valuable startup had been gradually expanding its suit of digital services, starting with GrabFood deliveries vertical and followed by its GrabPay e-payments ecosystem. When its core ride-hailing business stormed in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, GRAB quickly adapted by migrating nearly 150,000 transport partner-drivers across the markets to its deliveries business – allowing its badly hit partner-drivers to continue drawing an income, as restaurants and other services pivoted to home deliveries. GRAB Malaysia managed to transition 18,000 GrabCar drivers to its GrabFood and GrabExpress (parcel and courier delivery services) operation within a single day, responding to the influx of demand.
3. BUSINESS MODEL
“Without a plan, even the most brilliant business can get lost. You need to have goals to create milestones and have a strategy in place to set yourself up for success”
Yogi Berra
A business model is a structured plan of a business; on how it is making money. It’s an explanation of how the business delivers value to its customers at an appropriate cost.
Simplifying it in short; a business model describes how your company creates, delivers and captures values.
Grab Holdings Inc (GRAB)’s business model works on a simple rule of: “Access is better than ownership”. GRAB has built its technology platform i.e. Grab’s App (Grab) as an online on-demand service platform. It is connected to its delivery partners (partner-drivers or partner-bikers) and its end-users (consumers or clients) via mobile smartphones.
Grab’s end-users are able to access the Grab App anywhere easily as they want at any time where needed. Thus, the delivery partners would make the deliveries to the end-users with a cut of commission to Grab. It is an open platform strategy that helps share the benefits and rewards with all parties.
Get to know more on GRAB’s business model in details here.
At its core, a scalable business is one that focuses on the implementation of processes that lead to an efficient operation. The workflow and structure of the business allows for scalability and expansion. Scalability is a characteristic of an organization, system, model, or function that describes its capability to cope and perform well under an increased or expanding workload or scope. A system that scales well will be able to maintain or even increase its level of performance or efficiency even as it is tested by larger and larger operational demands. "Scalability is one of the most important factors for entrepreneurs considering starting a new business or hoping to take a current business to the next level. Successful business growth depends on a scalable business model that will increase profits over time, by growing revenue while avoiding cost increases.” The future is great for GRAB to scale up and utilise the new technologies of its services. The Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR4.0) is ready to integrate with Grab App to provide the best services to its customers around the world. The part of IR4.0 includes Internet of Things, Big Data, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Robotics.
4. OPERATION MANAGEMENT AND BUSINESS GOVERNANCE
“Work is a process, and any process needs to be controlled. To make work productive, therefore, requires building the appropriate controls into the process of work”
Peter Ducker
(management consultant, educator, and author)
Operations management (OM) is the administration of business practices to create the highest level of efficiency possible within an organization. It is concerned with converting materials and labor into goods and services as efficiently as possible to maximize the profit of an organization.
Business governance (BG) is a framework of structure and processes for decision making, accountability, internal control and behaviour or rules of ethics for every level in the organization hierarchy. Governance influences how an organisation's objectives are set and achieved, how risk is monitored and addressed and how performance is optimised.
At GRAB, they have instilled their 4H of its core values; Heart, Honour, Humility and Hunger. Their employees across countries and nations (known as Grabbers) should have the heart and humility to serve, the hunger to execute and bring ideas to life, and the honour to keep their word in GRAB’s ecosystem.
The Operation Management and Business Governance allows GRAB as a business entity to sail in the middle of the ocean throughout the whole world and benefiting millions of customers and thousands of its partner-deliveries.
5. ICONIC REFERENCES
We have seen the downfalls of companies internationally and how the companies struggled to keep the businesses from failing at the very end of the time; similar to the 37 seconds The Titanic’s crew had only seen the iceberg was in front of the ship; nothing much that they could do without proper preparation and proper equipment or tools. The iconic reference for the failed businesses in the middle of their journeys is The Titanic Mindsets which represent the mindset of the crew members and its planning team (i.e. the management of The Titanic). Get to know my analysis on The Titanic Mindsets here.
The most critical problem is hubris; a characteristic of excessive confidence or arrogance, which leads a person to believe that they may do no wrong. The overwhelming pride caused by hubris is often considered a flaw in character. It means arrogance and excessive pride. This can be a character feels internally, but it usually translates into the character’s actions.
It is totally opposite of The Titanic Mindsets for GRAB which I had the privilege to deal with the initial team in 2011 during the prototype development. But the iconic reference of The Titanic Mindsets is given to this topic in order for us to be aware of the dangerous of The Titanic Mindsets.
Plans are nothing. Planning is everything.
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But mindset is the king of everything.
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Once your mindset changes, everything on the outside will change.
As mentioned above, GRAB’s founders Anthony Tan and Tan Hooi Ling are totally apposite of The Titanic Mindsets; both of them are humble people despite Anthony Tan came from a wealthy family but he remains humble as an ordinary person.
Personally, I do hope that both of them to be remained as humble as they were before and for their team members to be the same wave length as them.
6. SUMMARY
Despite any challenges or obstacles faced or to be faced by GRAB in the middle of the ocean, GRAB could still steer the storms because GRAB has the above 4 elements in their mindsets and their progression.
The most significant difference and advantage that GRAB has in achieving their success as of to date is the mindsets of the leaders in GRAB as compared to others.
It is unfortunate to understand that there are a lot of businesses in the market but failed in the middle of their operations.
My humble suggestion for the existing businesses in operation is to revisit the above 4 elements in your ecosystems before it is to late to make any changes.
7. WHAT'S NEXT?
The Horizon Talk covers the five (5) elements to each topic in my blogs; includes Overview, MyStory, MyAnalysis, Iconic Reference, Summary and What’s Next.
Horizon is defined as the line at which the earth's surface and the sky appear to meet or it is also defined as the limit of a person's knowledge, experience, or interest.
The Iconic Reference refers to iconic events or elements that resemblance the topics which should be remembered for the betterment of the future.
The Horizon Talk’s final section is The What’s Next?. The 4 important elements that contributed to the successful of GRAB should be retained and strengthen by the whole team of GRAB. For business owners, I would humbly suggest for a revisit of your business units on the 4 important elements in this blog.
My biggest concern of all is The Titanic Mindsets which made a lot of once successful multi international companies succumbed to the end just like RMS Titanic 1912 succumbed to the Atlantic Ocean on the 14th April 1912.
Feel free to read more on my blogs for The Horizon Talk below:
Plans are nothing.
Planning is everything
but the mindset is the king of everything.
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