Five years on, Grab wants to grab online-to-offline commerce next

Grab, a ride-hailing company which has evolved over the last five years to a mobile payments platform with presence in 55 cities across 7 South-east Asian countries, has put in place plans to disrupt the online-to-offline (O2O) space. O2O commerce, is a business strategy that directs online customers to make a purchase at an offline business. During its 5th Anniversary event, Chief executive Anthony Tan, said “Yesterday, we disrupted transport. Today, we’re starting to disrupt payments. Tomorrow, all the O2O consumer services are waiting to be disrupted.”

Ms Stefanie Yuen-Thio, joint managing director of TSMP Law Corporation, said that the Grab story is no longer about ride-hailing and the lateral expansion of this offering to include bike-hailing etc; Grab has ambitions to expand into fintech through mobile payments and to leverage big data to improve traffic conditions. She added, “It’s inspiring that a company founded five years ago in South-east Asia can take on global giants like Uber, and formulate plans to improve living and economic conditions in Asia. Ultimately though, its business model is going to have to outrun its burn rate, if Grab wants to hitch a ride on the wave of disruptive success.”

Read more at The Business Times