Grab, Southeast Asia’s leading O2O (online-to-offline) mobile platform, today launched Grab Ventures, the company’s innovation arm, in Indonesia with plans to invest IDR3 trillion (US$250 million) in Indonesian startups.
Grab Ventures aims to help select Indonesian startups scale up nationally and across Southeast Asia, by providing a unique blend of Southeast Asian market access, mentorship, technology capabilities and strategic investments.
Grab Ventures is the latest initiative of the ‘Grab 4 Indonesia’ 2020 Master Plan to support Indonesia’s goal to be Southeast Asia’s largest digital economy by 2020.
Grab Ventures also announced Grab Ventures Velocity, their programme to specifically support startups in scaling stage.
The programme is in association with the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (Kominfo), Creative Economy Agency (BEKRAF), and partners include Amazon Web Services (AWS) and MDI Ventures, Telkom Indonesia’s corporate venture capital initiative.
The launch of Grab Ventures in Indonesia follows its regional launch in June in Singapore. It aims to discover and grow Southeast Asia’s next generation of technology leaders and promote innovation and digitisation.
Grab will partner or invest in startups who want to solve mobility, food, logistics, fintech and other O2O challenges.
Grab Ventures Velocity is a scale-up programme that is widely supported throughout Indonesia’s and Southeast Asia’s technology ecosystem. AWS will provide benefits to selected startups through the AWS Activate Portfolio Plus package and also technical mentoring on platform security, scaling and best practices to Grab’s curated startup partners.
MDI Ventures, which has operations in Singapore and Silicon Valley, will provide local expertise and access to their mentors networks.
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The Grab Ventures Velocity scale-up programme complements BEKRAF and Kominfo’s efforts to create a supportive environment for early startups through initiatives like Go Digital Vision 2020 and Go Startup Indonesia.
“We have proven ourselves as a partner of choice to other startups with our excellent track record to date. Since our acquisition of Kudo, it has grown its agent network from 400,000 to 1.4 million registered agents. OVO, our strategic payments partner has also rapidly grown with the help of Grab’s user base and became the largest digital wallet in Indonesia by Total Payments Volume (TPV),” Speaking at the launch of Grab Ventures in Indonesia, Ridzki Kramadibrata, Managing Director, Grab Indonesia, commented.
First announced in February 2017, Grab committed IDR10 trillion (US$700 million) to the ‘Grab 4 Indonesia’ 2020 Master Plan to provide all Indonesians an opportunity to move into the digital economy. The programme creates more jobs, upskills the Indonesian workforce and grows the technology sector. – BusinessNewsAsia.com