Southeast Asia mobility platform Grab’s funding spree sees another investor joining its ongoing Series H round, which targets at US$3 billion.
Japan’s Yamaha Motor Co. announced today it’s investing US$150 million into Grab. The two companies also inked a strategic partnership deal to co-develop the next-generation motorcycle ride-hailing services in Southeast Asia, with a focus on Indonesia, where motorcycle-taxi hailing is probably more popular than car hailing. Grab will be leveraging on Yamaha’s technology and knowhow to develop safe mobility services for motorcycle-taxi hailing.
Grab claims to have more than 125 million mobile downloads across the region.
“We anticipate significant advancements through this collaboration with Grab via strategic partnership,” says Takuya Kinoshita, chief general manager of Motorcycle Business Operations, Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd, adding further that he envisions greater improvement to the safety and confidence users will have in motorcycle ride-hailing services in the region going forward.
The most recent funding is just one of the many strategic deals that Grab has gotten into as it seeks to expand its service offerings to become the everyday app for the region.
Over the short span of last few months, Grab raised a US$200 million investment from online travel agency Booking Holdings, a US$250 million from automaker Hyundai Motor and its affiliate Kia Motors, and an undisclosed investment from Microsoft Corp amongst others. The non-strategic investments come from the likes of Vulcan Capital, Macquarie Capital, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Overall, after this additional funding from Yamaha, Grab has raised up to US$2.9 billion in its Series H financing round to date, bringing the firm closer yet again to its targetted US$3 billion by end-2018.
Editor: Ben Jiang
