Uber is still in a “hyper-growth phase,” with revenue more than doubling every six months, Travis Kalanick, the company’s chief executive officer and co-founder, said in a June 9 interview on Bloomberg Television. The service is now in about 40 countries and 130 cities, including Kuala Lumpur, he said.
Tan’s app is available in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines, and has 250,000 active users and more than 25,000 drivers, according to the company. GrabTaxi is targeting to quadruple the number of bookings to 120 per minute in the “next few months,” and is aiming to gain 1 million users, said Tan.
Funding Plan
GrabTaxi may consider an initial public offering when the number of rides booked reaches 2 million a day, he said, declining to be more specific beyond saying a share sale “won’t happen next year.” The company also offers a limousine service option, called GrabCar, with the app.
The company has raised more than $15 million in a second round of financing after garnering at least $10 million in an earlier round. Tan declined to provide details that would give a valuation of GrabTaxi.
Besides Temasek, which invested through wholly owned unit Vertex Venture Holdings Ltd., GrabTaxi also attracted funding from Menlo Park, California-based GGV Capital, which has backed companies such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Flipboard Inc.
Mobile apps are increasingly popular in Asia.
Didi Taxi, with 100 million passenger users and 1 million taxi drivers signed up in China, plans to hold an IPO in three to five years, preferably in the U.S., Zhang Bo, the company’s co-founder, said in an interview in Beijing last month.
Uber Valuation
“There’s some demand, but I don’t know if all of these companies will be able to make as much money as they have hoped,” said Terence Fan, an assistant professor for strategic management at Singapore Management University. “The market in Southeast Asia is much smaller compared to even the smaller cities in China.”