Official, Grab Uber Business Acquisition in Southeast Asia

Grab and Uber officially announce a merger for businesses in Southeast Asia. With this merger, Uber will have a 27,5 percent stake Grab and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi will join the board of directors Grab. The merger of the two will become ammunition Grab to compete with Go-Jek in the Southeast Asian market. Grab will focus on O2O (online-to-offline) platforms, fintech platforms (payments and financial assistance), and want to develop a leading food delivery service in the region.

Bloomberg yesterday report that Grab agreed to acquire the Uber business after rumors about this had been circulating since last November. Well Grab and Uber both have the support of Japan's Softbank as an investor.

In the release we received, Anthony Tan, Group CEO and Co-Founder, Grab say:

“We are proud that a company founded in Southeast Asia has grown to become the largest platform where our services have become an integral part of the daily activities of millions of consumers and provide job opportunities for more than 5 million people. The acquisition announced today marks the start of a new era. This business merger has created a platform and cost-efficiency leader in the Southeast Asia region. Together with Uber, we are now in a better position to fulfill our commitment to provide the best service to consumers. Consumers' trust in our transportation brand drives us to move forward as a company: improving people's lives through food delivery, payments and financial services.”

Post merger Grab will grow the business GrabFood in all major Southeast Asian countries, including with the capital acquisition of UberEats, in the first half of 2018. On the transportation side, Grab is said to be collaborating with the government and public transportation operators to develop an integrated multimodal commuter system. An example of the development of this system is GrabCycle (bike) and GrabShuttlePlus (bus on-demand) in Singapore.

Next Grab also improve the range of services in Grab Financial which includes mobile payments, micro-financing, insurance and other financial services for millions of consumers who have limited access to banking, micro-entrepreneurship and small capital business services in the Southeast Asia region. GrabPay as e-wallet will be available in all major Southeast Asian countries by the end of 2018.

Uber's service in Southeast Asia is said to be operating for up to two weeks, while UberEats (which focuses on food delivery), will operate until next May. The two parties will work together to ensure the transition of UberEats driver-partners, customers, merchants and delivery partners.

In Indonesia, in addition to building on-demand transportation services, Uber has partnered with Tokopedia and BBM, as well as developing the UberDelivery goods delivery system.

It is not yet known whether Uber employees in Southeast Asia will be transferred to Grab, transferred to another Uber operational office, or released.

Update: Menurut Uber official release, about 500 Uber employees in Southeast Asia will also be transferred to work with Grab.