Singapore-based ride-hailing app company Grab is looking to spin-off its e-wallet arm GrabPay for independent growth, according to people familiar with the matter.
Sources KrASIA spoke to also maintained that the company is currently raising $1 billion in a new round at a valuation of more than $10 billion. Earlier, both the WSJ and TechCrunch wrote that the company is valued at over $10 billion.
Grab’s last funding round was from Japanese car-maker Toyota, investing $1 billion in the six-year-old firm in June 2018, a move Anthony Tan, the CEO of Grab, said created tremendous momentum for the company’s fundraising efforts.
A Grab spokesperson said the spin-off is untrue.
In Southeast Asia, Grab’s biggest competitor would be Go-Jek, an Indonesian startup led by Nadiem Makarim. Go-Jek, having announced in May that it will be expanding into four new markets — Singapore, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand, is currently raising money in a bid to fight Grab for market share. Like Grab, Go-Jek also runs its own e-wallet, Go-Pay, and a number of other services from food delivery to a pharmaceutical aggregator.
(Update: 12:49 PM, July 17, 2018, the story has been updated to include a statement from a Grab spokesperson claiming the spin-off is not true.)
Editor: Ben Jiang