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Tan Hooi Ling

Grab co-founder Tan Hooi Ling to step down from operational roles

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Tan Hooi Ling, a co-founder of Singapore-based Grab Holdings Ltd, announced on Thursday that she will leave her operations position at the ride-hailing business by the end of this year. Hooi Ling, who started Grab in 2012 alongside CEO Anthony Tan, will move into an advising position, the business announced.

Tan Hooi Ling
Image Source: todayonline.com

Tan stated in an internal message to staff that Hooi Ling will also give up her board directorship and that her succession plan has been in place for some time. An idea for a 2011 Harvard Business School venture challenge inspired Tan and Hooi Ling to create Southeast Asia’s largest ride-hailing and food delivery company.

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Hooi Ling won’t be replaced right away, according to CEO Tan’s memo. Later this year, the nominating committee will consider individuals to strengthen the board. She has been a board member since the company’s public listing in December 2021 and presently serves as the head of Grab’s technology section.

Tan Hooi Ling is one of the co-founders of Grab, a Southeast Asian ride-hailing and on-demand delivery company. She, along with Anthony Tan, launched Grab (originally known as MyTeksi) in 2012. Tan Hooi Ling served as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Grab until 2020.

As COO, she was responsible for overseeing the day-to-day operations of the company, ensuring smooth service delivery, and driving strategic initiatives. She was known for her operational expertise and played a pivotal role in expanding Grab’s services beyond ride-hailing to include food delivery, digital payments, and more.

Throughout her tenure at Grab, Tan Hooi Ling made significant contributions to the company’s success and helped shape its growth trajectory. She played a crucial role in building strategic partnerships, securing funding, and driving Grab’s expansion into new markets.

She has been recognized for her contributions to the industry and has received several accolades, including being named in Forbes Asia’s 2017 list of “30 Under 30” and Fortune’s 2018 “Most Powerful Women International” list.

Grab operates primarily in Southeast Asia, serving over 400 cities in countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines. It has become one of the leading super-app platforms in the region, offering various services through a single mobile application.

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Over the years, Grab has secured significant funding from investors and has engaged in strategic partnerships with other companies. It has also acquired several businesses, including Uber’s Southeast Asian operations in 2018. Grab has attracted significant funding from various investors, including SoftBank, Toyota, and Didi Chuxing, among others.

In 2021, Grab went public through a merger with Altimeter Growth Corp, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). The merger valued Grab at around $39.6 billion, making it one of the largest SPAC deals in history.

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Grab : One of the Biggest Startups in South-east Asia

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“The youth of today is the future of tomorrow”, probably one of the famous quotes, you will find written almost everywhere. It is expected of the young generation to build a better tomorrow by eradicating today’s problem, be it a social, or an economical cause. The success of Grab narrates the story of a start-up based in Malaysia, which improved both the social environment of the city and made taxi booking much economical plus convenient.

The community of taxi drivers in Malaysia didn’t have a good reputation, as at times the customers were overcharged, the security of women was a big question, and the economic condition of the drivers was unsatisfactory. Anthony took the crisis of his city into a note and together, with Hooi Ling, started a business plan to launch a ride service.

Both the founders of Grab, Anthony Tan and Hooi Ling Tan graduated from Harvard Business School, and that is how they met each other. Grab was founded as GrabTaxi in June 2012, and after a couple of years, the headquarters shifted from Malaysia to Singapore. Today, Grab provides more than just a taxi service and has customers around eight countries.

Anthony Tan

Grab founders
Image Source: yourstory.com

Anthony pursued his Bachelor’s degree in economics followed by completing his MBA from Harvard Business School. Anthony belonged to a financially dominant family of Malaysia. His father ran a family an automobile business named Tan Chang Motors. After coming back from Harvard, Anthony joined his family business as head of marketing. But, after being a spectator of the degrading condition of transportation companies in Malaysia, he came up with the idea of opening his own start-up like the ones dominating in the U.S. Especially, when he found his friends and family complaining about it, he decided that he had to do something. He contacted Hooi Ling Tan, his classmate from Harvard, who chalked down a business plan.

Hooi Ling Tan

Unlike Anthony, who after Harvard joined his family business straightway, Hooi Ling had a better taste of the corporate world. Since she was a mechanical engineer graduate, she worked as an equipment engineer in Eli Lilly before going to Harvard. She was also a business analyst at McKinsey and Company and worked there for a couple of years.

After graduating from Harvard, Hooi Ling again joined McKinsey and Company as an associate and later, switched to salesforce.com as a senior director of pricing intelligence and monetization. She worked there till 2015, a couple of years even after co-founding Grab.

The Hurdles

Initially, when both Anthony and Hooi Ling stepped into the outer world and started pursuing the taxi companies, they received several rejections. The concept was new to them, and nobody was really that enthusiastic. So, they needed to approach drivers, and the common crowd, individually, to make them understand how they could be benefited. Both of them also took feedback from the citizens of Malaysia if they would like to bring a change to networking.

Finally, after several rejections, one taxi company with thirty taxis was willing to give it a shot. They even received a sum of $25,000 from Harvard Business School to start the business and the mobile app. Finally, the company was launched in 2012, and in the first couple of years, Anthony learned a lot from his mistakes and implemented better strategies.

The Flaws

In the beginning, the capital for Grab was funded by the Tan family, and it continued for quite a long time until chaos was created. After the funding round in April 2014, the company was confused about the total fundraised, which created a lot of fuss followed by some unnecessary expenditure. Things turned upside down, resulting in no salary for the drivers for one month.

Anthony realized it was high time to buckle up and manage the finance. He brought some discipline to the company by bringing some professional investors in the house and not relying fully on the Tan family.

The Right Decisions

Since Anthony focused on the betterment of social relations between a driver and the customer, especially, on the security of the women, every driver was interviewed personally. He said that though this process was time-consuming, he couldn’t compromise with it.

Today, Grab serves customers in more than 168 cities, across 8 countries. Apart from GrabTaxi, services, like GrabFood, GrabPay, GrabBike, has also been released. By 2017, the company completed one billion rides and 68 million downloads.

The company also started investing in R&D, as he is focused more on hiring smart people who can contribute more to the business than spending millions on advertising. Anthony truly is a person to admire with great passion to ameliorate the condition of our society.