Your Tech Story

ride-hailing service

Tan Hooi Ling

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

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By

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.

Also Read: Micron expects revenue impact following China ban

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.

Also Read: Australia hits buy-now-pay-later sector with consumer credit law

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.

cabify

Cabify : The Leading Exclusive Ride-Sharing Service from Spain

Leave a Comment / Founder, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

How many times it has happened that you have booked a ride, and the driver has made you wait longer than the ETA, or while riding the cab, your driver has not behaved the way he should have. Though these ride-hailing companies do promise for the best and affordable rides, they are not always able to keep up to what they talk about. Cabify is a similar ride-hailing service that entirely focuses on providing the best experience to its riders and takes them really seriously. The service had started as an exclusive one for a particular group of people, but later the company also expanded its services for the cheaper rides.

Early Life and Career

Juan de Antonio was born and brought up in Spain. He completed a degree in Electronic Engineering from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. As soon he graduated, he worked for optimizing data networks. After that, he joined the BCG as a strategy consultant. To polish his business skills, Antonio started an MBA course at Stanford University.

On the completion of his MBA degree, he joined Boston Consulting Group and later, a California based motorcycles company, the Zero Motorcycles, as Business Development Director. He played a key role in raising nearly $20 million for the company. This success helped Antonio gain enough experience as well as the confidence to start his own entrepreneurial journey.

Founding Cabify

cabify founder
Image Source: portafolio.co

Antonio got the opportunity to travel to different locations because of his studies as well as different jobs. While roaming around the world, he faced a similar problem in every part of the world, hiring the taxies. Different places had different methods of hiring the taxies, and there was no fixed method to pay them. In some places, he got really cheap deals, and some places really amazed him with their high taxi fares. Also, the payment method being cash in most of the places always annoyed him.

This was the problem, he discussed with his colleagues, and his friends Adeyemi Ajao, who is also one of the founders of Tuenti, and Brendan Wallace. After talking to them, he realised that it was not only him who was facing the problem, but others were also the victims of the same issue.

Antonio started Cabify as “Executive” in 2011 and established the company’s first office in Madrid. Juan became the CEO of the company, Ajao and Wallace became his advisors. With Cabify, Antonio wanted to provide people with comfort and exclusive rides at affordable prices. The company collaborated with companies that would supply them luxury cars like Mercedes and Audi.

The Rise

Within six months of its inception, Cabify registered around 20,000 users. In its first round of funding the company raised $1.6 million, Black Vine, Belgian fund Emerge, and AngelList, being the major investors. The company used the money for its expansion and opened its offices in Mexico, Chile and Peru.

The company was started to provide high-end car-rentals, but in 2013, the company started Cabify Lite, that would provide mid-range taxi services to its users. In April 2014, Cabify hosted another round of funding led by Seaya Ventures and raised an $8 million investment. The same year, the Cabify app had been downloaded 100,000 times globally.

Rakuten, Japanese e-commerce, made a major investment in Cabify, helping the company to further expand its services and raise its revenues to $40 million in October 2015. With the Hoy No Circula program in Mexico, the company reduced its fares by 25% to provide people with affordable rides. This helped the company to generate 200% demands in the country.

The Success

In 2016, Cabify raised $120 million in another round of funding, where Rakuten alone invested $92 million in Cabify. After the funding round, the company started its expansion to Argentina, Brazil, Portugal, etc. The funding round made it value at $320 million in the same year. The company has started with 20 employees, and by 2016, 400 employees had joined the company globally.

In January 2018, with another round of funding, Cabify raised $160 million from its existing and new investors, including Rakuten Capital, TheVentureCity, Endeavor Catalyst, GAT Investments, Liil Ventures, WTI, and valued at $1.4 billion, becoming the unicorn. Today, Cabify is operating in 14 countries.

The Difference

Though the company has got a similar business model as of Uber and Didi, the company has got some features that have made it successful in very less time. The company has decided a uniform for the drivers to handle the rides professionally. Cabify charges its customers per kilometre. Unlike Uber and other companies as well, Cabify does not change its prices on the peak hours, or according to minutes and kilometres, a passenger has spent time in the vehicle. Also, as Uber makes it easy for people to earn extra money in the spare time, Cabify has made driving the main source of income for the drivers to keep the job serious enough for them, so that they can provide the best experience to the passengers.

uber

Uber Lays off Another 350; Ensures it would be the Last Cut

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By

Despite Uber going public this year, the year has not been a very good one for the company. The IPO did not work out as it was expected to, and the company had to lay off a large number of staff twice this year. And the process of laying off the employees did not stop there. The company has announced that it is again cutting around 350 employees from various departments of the company. These departments include the Eats, performance marketing, Advanced Technologies Group, recruiting, various teams within the global rides, etc.

Around three months (maybe less) ago, the company had laid off around 400 jobs for people from its marketing team, and almost a month ago, 450 jobs were cut from the product and engineering teams. This time, the number of employees is a bit less than earlier, but more departments have been affected by the decision, and the company is claiming that it would be the last time when it will be laying off the staff.

This number is 1.5% of Uber’s total employees, but still, since it is happening third time this year, this is not good for the repo of the company. along with cutting the jobs, it has also made some shuffling of locations for its staff as well.

uber
Image Source: greenwatchbd.com

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi sent emails to the Uber employees, where he wrote, “Days like today are tough for us all, and the ELT and I will do everything we can to make certain that we won’t need or have another day like this ahead of us. We all have to play a part by establishing a new normal in how we work: identifying and eliminating duplicate work, upholding high standards for performance, giving direct feedback and taking action when expectations aren’t being met, and eliminating the bureaucracy that tends to creep as companies grow.”

The company has also cut a small percentage of jobs in its self-driving car unit. The people working in the US and Canada have been most affected by the decision.

Uber has been investing a lot to expand its services and business around the world. But 2019 have surely been the most challenging year for the company. This year in the second quarter Uber reported its biggest loss till date, i.e. $5.2 billion, which is double the loss it had experienced last year. So to cope-up with the changing market and new trends, the company has to take some serious steps.

Gett

Gett : Online Taxi Service, Making the Lives of Israeli People Easier

Leave a Comment / Founder, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

Have you ever noticed that the majority of the successful start-ups have emerged out during the time of crisis? Bored with the monotonous life, saying no to 9to5 jobs, addicted to gaming, and in this case, a 30 long minutes waiting for a taxi resulted in a successful story of getting a Taxi. We all have heard about the famous online cab hiring companies, like Grab, Uber, Lyft, which are majorly dominating in the United States. But, Gett is an Israel based start-up, launched in 2010, not only used for customer’s transportation but also couriers.

Shahar Waiser and Roi More are the two entrepreneurs, who created the Gett app for people of Israel and expanded it to Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. It was in the year 2009 when Waiser decided to open his own company when he became tired of waiting for a taxi for more than 30 minutes. Since Waiser was already good at doing business; the journey wasn’t that hard for him at all.

Shahar Waiser

Before further confusion arises, Shahar Waiser and Dave Waiser are the names of a single person, that is, founder of Gett. He completed his education in Computer Science from The Academic College of Tel-Aviv, Yaffo. Waiser mainly focused on learning Java, and Gett was not his first startup. Before Gett, he founded Infoauto, an online service that provided information about used cars and real estate. He created Infoauto while studying in college, and it became the first and largest company for classifieds informational system. Later, it was acquired by MARAM Group.

Shahar-Waiser Gett
Image Source: sk.ru

In April 2001, Waiser became the first CEO of Comverse, a company dealing with mobile data, telecommunication and related things. He then moved to Moscow and worked there for the Russian Federation and also received the “President Annual Sales Award”.

After leaving Comverse in March 2005, he founded Loyalize. Waiser designed a Social TV solution that dealt with real-time management that can be used by millions at a time. This product was used during the times of Oscars, Grammys, and many such prestigious awards, and even, got featured in Forbes as one of the topmost entertaining technologies. Later, it was acquired by Function(x).

Before launching GetTaxi, Waiser already became famous due to his smart inventions and entrepreneurial skills. Gett success emerged out as the brightest solution to the poor transportation condition of Israel, followed by becoming a very profitable company.

Roi More

More completed his graduation from Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya and passed out in 2002 with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration. Apart from co-founding Gett, More also founded Kamay Holdings (later acquired by 888.com) and MyLotto.com.

Success of Gett

Waiser started his work in 2009 and released the beta version of the app in Hebrew, which only operated in the area of Tel-Aviv. The company was officially launched on 1 November 2010 and eventually, expanded to London in 2011. In 2012, GetTaxi expanded to Moscow as well and opened their first United States office in the city of New York. The company raised $30 million in the funding round held in June 2012, in addition to which, an American Billionaire offered $9 million to help Gett enter the U.S market. The company operates as Juno in New York.

In 11th April 2016, Gett launched the new feature of splitting the payment among six people at the max. This definitely increased the number of booking, as it was more affordable. The biggest news of Gett, in 2016, was its partnership with Volkswagen Group, which helped Gett raise $300 million only from this partnership.

In June 2018, the company raised more than $80 million from its existing investors, Volkswagen Group, private firm Baring Vostok Capital Partner, and the American billionaire Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries. By 2018, the company raised $700 million in total and sales rides worth more than $1 billion. Among all the markets, Gett doing business in the New York market is expanding exponentially with approximately 45,000 drivers. This was closely followed by the London market, where most of the black cabs available were doing business with Gett.

Today, Gett is available in more than 120 cities, used by 20,000 companies worldwide to transport goods and couriers. The last round of funding helped Gett achieve the status of Unicorn, which is really a great success for any company.

The company is also focused on making rides more eco-friendly, hence reducing the dead mileage. Gett also invests in R&D significantly to use more recycled products.

grab

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

Leave a Comment / Founder, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

“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.

go-jek

Go-Jek : The Popular Ride-hailing Service and One of the First Unicorns of Indonesia

Leave a Comment / Founder, Product, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

Two decades ago, there were a few companies like eBay and Amazon that dreamt about the home-delivery and online shopping service. Later, people went to start ride-hailing through apps making our lives even easier. And today, we have got hundreds of such services, some really successful and some are still struggling for survival. One such service or we say platform, providing multiple such services, is Go-Jek. A company, despite running in only five countries, is a Unicorn, and in fact, is the first Unicorn company from Indonesia. The company is dedicated to providing three services in three categories, i.e., Go-Ride, Go-Send and Go-Mart, offering 18 app-based on-demand services.

Go-Jek was founded by Nadiem Makarim in 2010, as motorbike hailing service with a fleet of 20 motorcycles. The company ran a call centre to receive bookings for the motorbike rides and would send a notification to the drivers nearby for the pickup.

The Founder

Nadiem Makarim, a native Indonesian, was born on 4 April 1984 35 in Singapore to a lawyer father. Makarim completed his high school education from Jakarta, and later, joined the Brown University, from where he received a graduate degree in BA. He then went to Harvard University and pursued an MBA degree.

go-jek founder
Image Source: vulcanpost.com

After completing his education, he came back to Jakarta and started working at McKinsey & Company as a management consultant. He then left his job to start his entrepreneur journey, and to co-found an online fashion shop, named Zalora. But later, he had to leave the company and joined Kartuku a payments service provider, as the Chief Innovation Officer.

Founding Go-Jek

Makarim mostly used motorcycle taxis for transport. This was the cheapest and convenient method for daily travel. With time, he realised that there is a great opportunity in the business. So he went to co-found Go-Jek in 2010. The name was inspired by word Ojek that means motorcycle in Indonesia.

In the beginning, there was a lot of wait time for the drivers as there was no effective method to connect the driver and the passenger, such that the passenger took a lot of time to find the driver. This was a big issue, and Makarim wanted to solve it. Despite that, the company had joined in about 200 drivers by 2014. The next year, finally Makarim launched an app for the platform, such that it became really easy for the drivers and the passengers to track each other in time.

Becoming the Unicorn

The company raised a $1.5 billion in fundraising in 2014, becoming a unicorn within four years of its inception. In another round of funding, the company raised a $550 million in August 2016, and companies like, Google and Tencent, being among the prime investors. It also received a sum of investment from Indonesia’s biggest companies, Astra International and Blibli.com, the same year. The company was the most popular ride-hailing service provider in the country.

The same year, Go-Jek partnered with the renown Indonesian taxi company Blue Bird and expanded its service to taxis with the name Go-Car. It also launched an auto service, named Go-Auto, the same year. It also went to acquire two Indian companies, C42 Engineering and CodeIgnition. Other than that, Go-Jek also acquired India-based app development company named Leftshift and a healthcare startup Pianta. It also took over another Indonesian company that provided online ticket booking and event management service, named Loket.com.

In 2017, Go-Jek expanded its services into the fin-tech field through its Go-Pay virtual wallet and acquired companies named Kartuku, Midtrans, and Mapan. The users can use the wallet to pay in any retail shop, both online and offline. They can also withdraw money at the partner banks’ ATMs. The company also added the payments through QR scanning after getting a license from the central bank in the same year. Go-Jek has also partnered with Google for its GPS service and soon will be partnering with Amazon for its retail services.

The Expansion

In 2018, the company valued at $5 billion, exceeding the total market cap of all transportation companies in Indonesia Stock Exchange. Today, the company has its international offices in Singapore, India, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines.

Through its food delivery services, Go-Jek has partnered with about 250,000 merchants in Indonesia. The company has also established a food and beverage selling service through its Go-Food merchants. The company is hosting a fleet of 1,000,000 vehicles for its ride-hailing service alone in Indonesia. Along with that, the Go-Jek branches include Go-Ride, Go-Shop, Go-Mart, Go-Box, Go-Tix, Go-Clean, Go-Plus, Go-Bills, Go-Massage, Go-Play, Go-Studio, and more.

As of February 2019, the estimated value of the company is about US$10 billion.