With the right mindsets, they had evolved from graduates of Harvard Business School (HBS) in 2011 to Southeast Asia's first decacorn, and the biggest technology startup in the region. It became publicly-traded on NASDAQ in 2021 following the largest SPAC merger at the time. In 2023, Fast Company listed Grab amongst the most innovative companies in the Asia-Pacific region.
Can we imagine our lives without innovation? Can we live without cars to commute or taxis to travel? Back to the basic necessities in our lives, without rice cooker to cook rice or kettle to boil water? Would it be possible if taxis were not available for us to travel? Could we imagine that cars were not created back then?
Almost everyone knows that Henry Ford invented the Model T, the first commercially available automobile in the year 1896. Automobiles had then evolved into gasoline, electric, steam and solar powered automobiles. An innovation is the creation of an innovator. Since innovation is the application of creative ideas, it's innately connected to creativity and they both work in tandem with one another. An innovation can be a physical object and a concept to improve or create a new process. People innovate to solve a problem or make society functionally more convenient.
These people of innovators had cracked their heads to use their creativity and imagination to invent innovation products to create new ideas, solve problems and think of possibilities that no one else has thought of before.
Grab Holdings Inc (GRAB) is a Singaporean multinational technology company headquartered in One-North, Singapore. It is the developer of a super-app for ride-hailing, food delivery and digital payments services on mobile devices that operates in Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
1.0 OVERVIEW
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. The Horizon Talk covers the five (5) elements to each topic in my blogs; it includes The 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 Iconic Reference refers to iconic events or elements that resemblance the topics which should be remembered for the betterment of the future.
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.
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 provides 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.
“Life is too short to learn from your mistakes.
So, learn from others” - Anonymous
The below graphic illustration is a summary of GRAB’s timelines of their first 10 years. They are growing steadily smooth throughout the countries and the nations.
Despite the ongoing 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.
Let’s get to know their journey here and lets learn from their success.
3.0 MY ANALYSIS
Based on my observation and analysis, the following 4 elements were discovered on why GRAB is successful and they are growing steadily.
The right mindset.
Visionary leadership
Business model
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.
(Anonymous)
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?”
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”.
“Vision is the art of seeing the invisible”
Jonathon Swift
(Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer)
With the right mindset, they explored the problems faced by the customers (passengers) and the taxi drivers. Then, they discovered the possibilities of solving the problems and then they challenged themselves to provide the best services to the people (passengers and taxi drivers). Finally they had come out with the idea of MyTeksi App in 2011.
Anthony Tan and Tan Hooi Ling are humbled people where they had uncovered themselves with the challenges and problems faced by the customers (passengers) and the Grab partner-drivers. Their empathy and compassion had produced the better version of Grab app progressively for the usage of its customers and Grab partner-drivers.
The same methodology of Design Thinking were used by GRAB for local issues; both logistical and political issues included dealing with unions, government bureaucracies and even criminal attacks.
GRAB had evolved tremendously from rebranding of MyTeksi to GrabTaxi in June2012 and further rebranded it to Grab in 2016. They had penetrated 8 countries of Southeast Asia namely Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnamese and the Philippines with the same structure of its business model.
One of the significant events of GRAB’s journey was the taken over of Uber’s operation in ASEAN countries which was made via a merger of operation in 2018 for a 27.5% stake in GRAB.
2. VISIONARY LEADERSHIP
“Vision is the art of seeing the invisible”
Jonathon Swift
Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer
The 1st contributing factor 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.
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.
4.0 ICONIC REFERENCE
The Tortoise in the The Hare&The Tortoise Fable Story is given to GRAB’s founders and its management team. Their humble-persistent yet focused mindset had driven them to accelerate the company from day one till currently despite challenges and obstacles despite limited resources that they had faced during the years.
Get to know the story of The Hare and The Tortoise here.
Despite GRAB was at a startup and a smaller size company initially, it had successfully overtook the main player at that time.
5.0 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.
"We only change when it’s too late"
Anonymous
6.0 WHAT'S NEXT?
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.
Related stories:
1.0 Grab (The Company) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grab_(company)
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