Southeast Asia's Grab Superapp to Go Public, Set for $40 Billion USD Valuation

Southeast Asia’s most popular ride-share and food delivery app Grab has declared its plans to go public on the Nasdaq Stock Market in a deal that values it at nearly $40 billion USD.

The company announced its partnership with special purpose acquisition company Altimer Group on Tuesday, adding that it expected to raise over $4 billion USD from the transaction. The proposed deal hikes the company’s valuation to $39.6 billion USD and is expected to be the largest-ever U.S. offering by a Southeast Asian company.

“It gives us immense pride to represent Southeast Asia in the global public markets,” Grab CEO Anthony Tan said in a statement.”This is even more critical as our region recovers from COVID-19.”

Brad Gerstner, CEO of Altimer Group, called Grab “one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing internet companies.” Grab said it expects its total addressable market to grow to $180 billion by 2025.

The Singapore-based company was founded in 2012 and offers food delivery, ride-hailing services and digital wallet payments. The company says its combination of offerings has made it a “superapp.”

“It offers an ecosystem of complementary services, addressing high-frequency, everyday needs, all through one app,” Grab said, adding that many of its users use two or more of its services. It said its decision to go public was spurred by strong growth in 2020 despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

Southeast Asia has recently seen huge growth in the array of offerings for food delivery services. In 2018, GrabFood acquired Uber’s regional operations, including UberEats.

Last month, competitor Deliveroo debuted on the London Stock Market, the biggest U.K. share listing in nearly a decade.