Inside Grab: How a Super App Transformed Southeast Asia — with CFO Peter Oey

Summary

Run the Numbers – Inside Grab: How a Super App Transformed Southeast Asia

Host: CJ Gustafson
Guest: Peter Oey, CFO of Grab
Date: February 20, 2025

---

Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the business model and meteoric rise of Grab, Southeast Asia’s leading super app, with its CFO, Peter Oey. Host CJ Gustafson explores how Grab has evolved from a ride-hailing startup in Malaysia to a multifaceted platform offering everything from transport to financial services. They discuss why the super app model has thrived in Southeast Asia, the challenges (and impossibility) of replicating it in the West, the “layer cake” strategy of fintech, cross-selling in Grab’s ecosystem, and Southeast Asia’s untapped potential as a global tech hub. The conversation is practical, energetic, and full of actionable insights for operators and founders interested in international expansion, business models, and fintech.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins and Evolution of Grab

• Solving for Safety: Grab started 13 years ago in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, initially to make transportation safer—especially for women—where taxis and public transport felt risky ([06:32-08:30]).
• Ride-Hailing to Super App: After six years of focusing purely on ride-hailing (often competing with Uber), Grab’s acquisition of Uber’s Southeast Asian operations became the turning point ([00:00], [10:14]). It allowed consolidation under a single tech stack, opening the door to food delivery (GrabFood) and, eventually, a suite of other services.

“Scale is really important because it drives efficiency. …We didn’t build different tech stacks — to drive this efficiency and leverage, we just added more products into this particular app that we have, the multi apps. So you have mini apps within an app.”
— Peter Oey ([10:14])

• Super App Defined: Grab today includes ride-hailing (cars, bikes, party buses, shuttles), delivery (food, groceries, pharmacy, courier), digital payments (GrabPay), insurance, lending, and banking—all in one app.
  “[Think] Uber plus DoorDash plus PayPal plus SoFi, kind of all in one app, right? Not four apps, all in one.”
  — Peter Oey ([09:12])

2. Why the Super App Model Works in Southeast Asia

• Localization: Success comes from methodical, city-by-city adaptation to local needs, contrasting to the more global, cookie-cutter approach of Western peers ([11:44]).

• Scale & Impact:

  • 8 countries, 700 cities
  • 6 million drivers, 6 million merchants
  • 42 million monthly transacting users, ~10 million transactions daily ([13:41])

• Demographics:

  • Southeast Asia population: 660 million—half under 30 years old ([14:14])
  • Mobile-first mindset: Most users skipped the PC/web phase, jumping directly to smartphones.

“Half of Southeast Asian population [is] under the age of 30. …They’re actually quite digital savvy…People just lived on phones from the get go.”
— Peter Oey ([14:27])

• Behavioral Contrast with the West:
  Western consumers are used to fragmented, single-function apps and have entrenched web/PC/mobile habits, making supersized consolidation much harder ([16:02]).

“People are just so used to having this fragmented suite of apps…Also, the tech stack was built for one or two products at max at the end of the day…”
— Peter Oey ([16:02])

3. Fintech and the Layer Cake Strategy

• Fintech as Flywheel:
  Grab begins by digitizing payments (GrabPay), then layers lending (to drivers, merchants, and consumers) based on unique data—enabling underbanked individuals and making both customers and service providers more loyal to the platform ([19:33]-[22:22]).

“For example, we lend money to drivers. …Because we know these drivers, they're on our platform, we know how much they earn. I’m willing to actually underwrite them and able to give them some loans to help them…We do the same for merchants…”
— Peter Oey ([19:33])

“[Our] first foray into fintech…was digital payments—trying to get Southeast Asians to move from cash to cashless…Covid…really accelerated the cashless in Southeast Asia.”
— Peter Oey ([23:22])

• Still a Cash Society: Even now, about a third of transactions are in cash ([23:36]).
• Layer Cake Approach: Payments → Lending → Insurance/Banking → More advanced services ([23:22]-[25:01]).

4. Monthly Transacting Users (MTU) and Ecosystem Cross-Selling

• Importance of MTU:
  42 million MTU is “like the entire population of Spain using your app monthly.” The goal is to get each user to adopt multiple services—building loyalty and increasing their lifetime value ([25:01]).

• Cross-Sell in Action:

  • ~2/3 of MTUs use two or three products ([25:26])
  • Subscription models (akin to DashPass/Uber One) drive frequency and basket size.
  • Entry may start at food, mobility, or payments, but cross-sell drives expansion.

“All the cross selling opportunities happens…We started to cross sell also between food and grocery. Now we are also starting to do cross selling between food to mobility and mobility to food…”
— Peter Oey ([27:35])

• Dual-Side Ecosystem:
  Drivers and merchants are also platform consumers—e.g., a driver might use Grab for both work (driving, deliveries) and personal activities (ordering food, taking rides) ([29:01]).

“These drivers are both doing passenger and also are doing all the other forms of deliveries…The throughput of these drivers in a day is maximized and that enables them to earn more also…”
— Peter Oey ([29:01])

5. Advertising: The Next Growth Frontier

• Ad Revenue Opportunities:
  Currently ~1.6% of delivery GMV vs. 2%+ for DoorDash or 3%+ for Instacart ([30:54]).
• Growth Potential:
  Food and grocery delivery are key segments for future advertising-led monetization, especially with targeted FMCG ads.

6. Southeast Asia as a Growing Tech Innovation Hub

• Talent Boom:
  Stronger homegrown and returning diaspora tech talent, not just in Singapore but increasingly in Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Thailand ([32:43]).

  “If you compare five, ten years to where we are today, the talent pool in Southeast Asia, especially in tech, has just gone much, much better. …The tech scene is actually now more and more becoming a really growing sector…”
  — Peter Oey ([33:40])

• Advice for Western Expansion:

  • Start with one city/country and localize deeply.
  • Singapore is a common entry point due to English usage and business-friendliness, but Indonesia and Malaysia are also strong options.
  • Product-market fit must be repeated for every country ([35:46]).

  “What you do in one country may not work in another Southeast Asian country…Go in there, say: ‘Okay, what are the behaviors? How do people interact?’…You need to adapt.”
  — Peter Oey ([36:39])

7. Driving Economic Impact

• Empowering the Marginalized:

  • Many drivers and merchants were part of the informal economy; Grab provides a bridge to stable income, financial services, and digital upskilling.
  • During COVID, Grab rapidly onboarded offline small merchants so they could survive via digital orders ([37:34], [39:43]).

  “A good portion of our drivers were from the informal economy. Like, we are their first kind of job that they've got. …We do a lot of retraining for drivers to upskill…We help merchants digitize.”
  — Peter Oey ([37:34])

• Merchant Success Story:
  Peter shares the example of a pizza shop that started on Grab, expanded to 8-10 locations, and eventually went public ([40:51]).

8. Proprietary Technology as a Competitive Moat

• Mapping:
  Grab created their own hyper-localized mapping system via crowdsourcing with their 6 million drivers—indispensable due to convoluted, ever-changing roads, and indoor routing needs ([41:53]).

  “We mapped Southeast Asia…And the way we did it was through crowdsourcing. …We put cameras on [our drivers]…We built our own map…Being very localized is a competitive moat now.”
  — Peter Oey ([41:53], [45:11])

• Other Tech:
  Payment stack and fraud prevention tools are built in-house; third-party solutions were insufficient for the region’s complexity and risk.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the value of scale and localization:
  “Scale is really important because it drives efficiency. …We started to add other products, but it’s all one tech stack.”
  — Peter Oey ([10:14])

• Explaining Southeast Asia’s mobile-first leap:
  “Most of these Asians skipped the web…People just lived on phones from the get go.”
  — Peter Oey ([14:27])

• Why the super app model faces challenges in the West:
  “The tech stack was built for more about monolithic or one product…It’s a combination of those things that makes it harder for the US to move to more of a super app concept.”
  — Peter Oey ([16:02])

• On fintech’s network effect:
  “It’s actually a network effect…Their retention is up and productivity is up. So it's a real win-win for both sides.”
  — Peter Oey ([22:22])

• Advice for US companies entering SEA:
  “Really localize your product. …What you do though in that one country may not work in another Southeast Asian country.”
  — Peter Oey ([36:39])

• Mission focus:
  “Our mission is to drive Southeast Asia forward. …How do we empower Southeast Asians, especially the marginalized?”
  — Peter Oey ([37:34])

• On building a moat:
  “It’s not easy to replicate what we did from a tech perspective, from a localization perspective. …It’s taken 13 years for us to get to where we are today.”
  — Peter Oey ([45:11])

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Origin story & business model: [06:32]-[09:12]
• Super app evolution and Uber acquisition: [00:00], [10:14]
• Localization & scale: [11:44]-[14:14]
• SEA’s digital & youth advantage: [14:14]-[15:10]
• Why super apps struggle in the West: [16:02]
• Fintech flywheel, lending, and digital payments: [19:33]-[23:22]
• Cash vs. cashless: [23:36]-[25:01]
• Monthly transacting users & cross-selling: [25:01]-[29:01]
• Advertising revenue opportunity: [30:54]
• SEA as a tech hub: [32:43]-[36:39]
• Advice to Western companies: [35:46]-[36:39]
• Driving economic activity & merchant digitization: [37:34]-[40:51]
• Proprietary mapping & localization moat: [41:53]-[45:11]

---

Tone & Takeaways

The episode is energetic, practical, and peppered with real-world operator wisdom and playful banter. Peter Oey brings contagious passion for building both technology and communities, offering a playbook for successfully layering products, creating network effects, and scaling across ultra-diverse geographies.
CJ’s curiosity and financial operator’s lens bring out actionable lessons: whether you're a startup CFO, a founder eyeing new markets, or anyone wanting to understand how digital platforms can empower millions—and generate outsized returns.

---

“Our mission is to drive Southeast Asia forward ... We still have a long way to go. We always say we only serve 1 in 20 Southeast Asians and we can do much more.”
— Peter Oey ([39:43])

Transcript

[Peter Ooi]

Yeah, when we started it was a ride hailing business and that was around for maybe six years. Half the life of the company was very much on the ride hailing when we, we were competing with Uber head to head in a lot of the countries in Southeast Asia. And really the turning point for us was when we, we actually acquired Uber's operation in Southeast Asia. So Uber Uber Rides became Grab and Uber Eats became Grab Food, which is our food delivery. And actually that was the turning point when we started to say, you know what, we have more scale in our business. Scale is really important because it drives efficiency. We started to add other products, but it's all one tech stack.

[CJ]

Wow, that's crazy. Is this thing on?

[Peter Ooi]

Yesterday's price is not today's price.

[Podcast Host]

Welcome back to Run the Numbers. I just got to interview the CFO of Grab, Peter Ooi. I've wanted to go deep into the super app business model for so long and I finally found the guy. We go deep into Grab's business model, its evolution over time, and why the super app model works so well in Southeast Asia. Why is that region primed for it to succeed? If he sees the super app model succeeding in Western markets and how fintech and banking services drive the flywheel effect for Grab, they've taken this really cool layer cake strategy with financial services. He talks about where it starts and one of my favorite metrics to track monthly transacting users, MTU and how it's important to get them on multiple apps within the ecosystem. We also talk more broadly about Southeast Asia as a tech hub. It often gets overlooked as a region for tech talent and innovation. He gives us an update on what's going on in the region. And for those looking to either sell into Southeast Asia or start a company, there's a How are demographic and economic trends boosting tech innovation across the region? And what can Western companies learn from Grab's approach there? Peter is a smart guy and boy, does he bring the energy. I want to work for a guy like Peter someday. Peter, can I be you when I grow up? All right. All this and much, much more after a short word from our sponsors and you give us five stars, please. Five stars. Trust isn't earned, it's demanded.

[CJ]

Whether you're a startup founder navigating your.

[Podcast Host]

First audit or a seasoned security professional.

[CJ]

Scaling your GRC program, proving your commitment.

[Podcast Host]

To security has never been more critical or complex. That's where Vanta comes in. Businesses use Vanta to establish trust by automating compliance needs across over 35 frameworks. Like SoC2 and ISO 27001, centralized security workflows, complete questionnaires up to five times faster, and proactively manage vendor risk. Vanta not only saves you time, it can also save you money.

[CJ]

A new IDC white paper found that.

[Podcast Host]

Vanta customers achieve $535,000 per year in benefits and the platform pays for itself in just three months. Join over 9,000 global companies like Atlassian Quora the Factory, who use Vanta to manage risk improve security in real time for a limited time, our audience gets $1,000 off Vanta at V A N T A dot com metric. That's V A N T A dot com metrics for $1,000 off.

[CJ]

Here's a question. Do you feel like you're wasting time and energy on contract renewals or tracking shadow IT spend or this is a bad one explaining rising software costs to the board? Truth is, traditional spend management is broken. That's where Tropic comes in. Tropic is an intelligent spend management solution that consolidates your spend data and processes into one unified offering, enabling insights and decisive action. It doesn't just show you where the problems are, it helps you solve them. From spotting hidden optimization opportunities like duplicative spend, to automating those painful procurement workflows, to giving you the best market data that turns every vendor negotiation in your favor. I'm a Tropic customer myself. I've been using them for over a year and I love their price checks. They allow me to see if I'm getting a fair market deal instantly. And I'm proud to say that I am no longer using my email as our company's contract repository. I've got every document and renewal neatly organized in my Tropic portal. Isn't it time to turn spend management into your competitive advantage? Visit TropicApp IO MostlyMetrics. See what's possible when intelligence drives your decisions. TropicApp IO mostly metrics does your revenue.

[Podcast Host]

Recognition process feel like a total guessing game?

[CJ]

Step right up and pick a card. Any card. You're not alone.

[Podcast Host]

Revenue account is getting more complex, especially with subscription models. You usage based billing and evolving compliance standards.

[Peter Ooi]

Woohoo.

[Podcast Host]

Right Rev is here to help you gain control over your revenue accounting. Right Rev automates the revenue recognition process from end to end. Whether it's multi element arrangements, subscription renewals or complex usage based contracts, Right Rev takes care of it all. That means fewer spreadsheets, fewer errors and more time for your team to focus on growth. Customers like Snowflake, Wow Logic Monitor and Epicore chose Right Rev to manage their high volume and complex revenue accounting. CFOs can see the bigger picture faster without being held up by their team's reporting nightmares. You know me, I'm a business model fanatic. And don't get me wrong, I love all the evolutions. We've got self serve, revenue, usage based revenue, and now even success based revenue, you name it. But that doesn't make it any easier for us being counters on the back end to keep score. Right Rev is like a cheat code for staying ahead of revenue complexities. So you're ready to transform your revenue accounting. Visit writer.com to schedule a demo. That's right, rev.com and tell him your boy CJ sent. Right rev. Modern revenue recognition simplified. Oh, yeah.

[CJ]

Peter. Welcome to the Run the Numbers podcast. So I'm a huge fan of business. I think it's cool to get excited about business models, about metrics, et cetera. And so I jumped at the opportunity to interview you and learn about Grabs business model because you've been a pioneer in this super app space. And it's something like in the US that I think we hear about a lot and we're like, is somebody going to start a super app? Is it possible to do it? And I feel like you've largely nailed the model. So what I wanted to start off talking about at first is what is Grab's business model? And then maybe we can touch on how it's evolved over time.

[Peter Ooi]

Sure. Let me ask you first, have you been to Southeast Asia?

[CJ]

No, not yet. It's on my bucket list.

[Peter Ooi]

You got to check it out. You got to check it out. We have 11 countries in Southeast Asia. Roughly 20,000 islands, 660 million people, full of diversity, culture, food, all different types of food, lots of beaches, because we have lots of islands. Also at the same time now you get a bit of traffic. Traffic is a little bit gnarly in Southeast Asia. It's a bit like Los Angeles. Sometimes it's worse because people don't stick to their lanes in Southeast Asia. But really, if you think about it, why Southeast Asia is so unique to Grab and we only operate in Southeast Asia, we operate in eight countries, 700 cities. Is that when we started the business? We were trying to solve. This is 13 years ago. We were trying to solve for safety. Now when you think about, okay, safety, because for a lot in Southeast Asian countries, in the cities, it's not the safest place to catch public transport. It's not the safest place also to catch taxis, especially for Women. And that's how the company was birthed. It was actually started by solving safety, especially for women. And it stayed in. It started in a city called Kuala Lumpur, in Malaysia itself. And that's where our first rate hailing business was really born. And from there we added from taxi to private cars, etc. And we just grew from city to city. Now the super app that you mentioned earlier actually was birthed, much related actually in our evolution of our business. And that came out from just customer feedback, like they want other products also into the other services that we have today. So what's a super app? And the super app really is multiple products. Like you can have 10, 9, 10 products, but all residing in one app. So in our business today, 13 years later, what do we have in terms of products? We have ride hailing, two wheels, three wheels, four wheels. We have buses, we have party buses, like the party, we have shuttles. So any wheels. Basically we want to transport people in throughout Southeast Asia. And also we have delivery services. So we do food delivery. You want grocery delivery, you want pharmacy delivery, you want courier, packaging delivery, everything on demand. The same app, this is literally the same app that you use today. And then also we added financial services products. So you want to make digital payments using GrabPay, which is our digital payment wallet system. Kind of think of like Apple Pay, we have that too. We also have insurance products, we have lending products, we also have banking products also within our ecosystem. So that's quite unique because you have multiple touch points that you monetize the customer journey flow. And that's what makes it very unique. So if I was trying to simplify it in, in the U.S. think of it, if you had kind of Uber plus DoorDash, plus PayPal, plus SoFi, kind of all in one app, right? Not four app, five app, all in one app, which is kind of unique. So you have the multiple touch points with the customers every single day and lots of intervals within the day itself.

[CJ]

From the outside looking in, that sounds like an immense undertaking. But I guess hearing the story, it sounds like it was very methodical and you layered on products over time as consumers pulled you in that direction.

[Peter Ooi]

That's right. C.J. yeah. When we started it was a ride hailing business and that was around for maybe six years. Half the life of the company was very much under ride hailing. And really the turning point for us was when we were competing with Uber head to head in a lot of the countries in Southeast Asia. And there was a season where there was truce and Uber Put out the white flag and we actually acquired Uber's operation in Southeast Asia. So Uber Uber Rides became Grab and Uber Eats became Grab Food, which is our food delivery. And actually that was the turning point when we started to say, you know what, we have more scale in our business. Scale is really important because it drives efficiency. We started to add other products, but it's all one tech stack. That's the difference. We just didn't build different tech stacks with it because to drive this efficiency and the leverage using the same tech stack, and we just added more products and products into this particular apps that we have, the multi apps. So you have mini apps within an app.

[CJ]

Wow, that's crazy. I want to dig into something that you said, Peter, and that's the geographic layout of Southeast Asia and the super app model working. Well, there's listening to you describe how diverse it is, how many different places there are. My head goes to how do you possibly operationalize that? But it actually seems like Grab is well suited for Southeast Asia in particular. So why does the supermodel app work so well in the countries that you operate in today?

[Peter Ooi]

Sure, yeah. You know, the way we've taken the approach actually is a very localized version, which means that when we go into a city, you know, we adapt to what the customers need. So again, because it's so diverse, Southeast Asia and the way the infrastructure also in each city is quite different, we had to adapt to those cities. And we've done is we're going into a city, we've localized the product to what kind of what the city wants, et cetera. We've got boots on the ground also. And that's really critical as a one of our, as a competitive mode is to really localize the that user experience for the customer. But also because we're a marketplace also we need to recruit drivers also on our platform. We have to recruit merchants on our platform also. And that touch and the local touch with the specific city is really important. So we've done a fantastic job in doing that. Now, it's taken a lot of years to do that, but that's part of our competitive mode in Southeast Asia. Just able to really penetrate. So if you think about on scale, they may give you maybe some numbers like, okay, so we operate in eight countries, 700 cities. We have roughly 6 million registered drivers on our platform today. We have 6 million roughly merchants on our platform, 42 million monthly transacting users on our platform. Those are every month. So 42 million Southeast Asians are using one of our products. In our super app today. And we do roughly about 10 million transactions a day through our app today. So we have size, we have scale in Southeast Asia itself. But that took a lot of years to build also because that localness is really important actually if you think about how we were able to really take on Uber back then back in the early years was, was really our point of differentiation, was really able to localize the product much more business, taking more of a global approach that some of our peers do today.

[CJ]

And just to put the monthly transacting users into perspective for listeners, 42 million is such a large number I was doing out of the back of the envelope. So Spain's population is 48 million, Italy's is 58 million.

[Podcast Host]

That, that's a ton of people, Peter.

[Peter Ooi]

Yeah, yeah, it is a ton of people. But yet Southeast Asia has 660 million people.

[CJ]

And I think people don't realize how big Southeast Asia is because you start to add up all the islands, you start to add up all the different major cities in the area. Like it gets big real quick.

[Peter Ooi]

Exactly. Yeah. The other fascinating point CJ is that half of Southeast Asian population, the 660 million people, about half of them are under the age of 30.

[CJ]

Oh wow. That's a really young population.

[Peter Ooi]

Exactly right. You've got a population base which is very young. They're actually quite digital savvy like because if you look at it, most of these Asians skipped the web, like didn't exist to them. The infrastructure wasn't there back in the web days. And then people just went straight to smartphones. And that goes to also some of the question you asked earlier about the super app. Why is it different in Southeast Asia? Because people just lived on phones from, from the get go. And you've got this digital savvy population also which is rising and the income also is rising, which just is so used to dealing with whatever's on your phone because at the end of the day. So it's a really interesting dynamic part of the world here that people don't understand or realize sometimes.

[CJ]

Yeah, they didn't grow up with a dial up connection on broadband Internet like I did. I can, I can still hear the noise in my head in my parents house when it would dial up. But that's super fascinating because I think that's one of the reasons why the super app model succeeds so well because people are digital natives to applications. Like they skipped the whole PC wave. Well, to link that to western markets because I think it's so fascinating of how you're saying if you took uber, Uber Eats, SoFi, PayPal altogether. I think like in western markets we think that would be so cool, but it would be almost impossible to build at this point. Do you see the super app model succeeding in western markets? And I guess there could be the consideration of like how hard would it to be to build from a tech perspective, but also like user behavior. Maybe it's more in the consumer's hands of like they're just not used to that.

[Peter Ooi]

Exactly. C.J. and I spend a lot of time in the U.S. i think it's people are just so used to having this fragmented suite of apps on their phones. You know, one for e commerce, one for payments, one for ride hailing, one for food delivery, and people are just so used to that. And also people transacting both on the web and then going to their phone and vice versa. I think the customer behavior is just so ingrained in that. And also that's one part from the customer journey experience. The other side also is you've got really the tech stack right people. When we built the Amazons of the world, even the Ubers of the world, when they built the tech stack, it was built for more about monolithic or one product of two products at max at the end of the day. Right. So that's also the other consideration. So I think it's a combination of those things that makes it a little bit harder for the US to move to more of a super app concept.

[CJ]

Hey, thanks for listening. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

[Podcast Host]

Ready to plan confidently, close faster and report with accuracy. Here's what sets Planful apart. Imagine purpose built solutions for every department from FP&A to accounting, marketing to HR, all with built in financial intelligence. It's easy to implement Planful in just weeks with minimal IT involvement, enabling seamless collaboration across your organization's key financial workflows.

[CJ]

Best of all, Planful grows with you.

[Podcast Host]

Its unmatched scalability ensures that no matter how fast your business expands, Planful can keep up. See why over 1500 customers worldwide choose Planful as their flexible, user friendly, end to end financial performance management platform. Visit planful.com metrics to see how you can elevate your team. This year with Planful, they will hook you up. It is planful.com metrics.

[CJ]

Tell me boy.

[Podcast Host]

CJ sing planful.com metrics. Well, if you've listened to this podcast.

[CJ]

Before, you definitely know that I think it's cool to be a fan of business.

[Podcast Host]

I'm Obsessed with researching how the best companies operate and specifically how they manage their money. And I've learned that a company's financial stack can make the difference between world domination and obscurity. That's why I want to tell you about Brex. Because I want you to rule the world. Brex is an impressive financial services and software company that has grown immensely since it was founded in 2017. In just the last year alone, Brex accelerated customer acquisition by 50% with 91% growth in enterprise customers. And there's good reason that over 30,000 companies from startups to enterprises have flocked to Brex. Brex offers the world's smartest corporate card on a full stack global platform that is everything CFOs need to manage their finances on an elite level. Plus they offer modern banking and treasury as well as intuitive expenses and accounting automation, bill pay and travel.

[CJ]

Wow.

[Podcast Host]

It's all in the roster whenever you need it. Brex grows with you. CFOs tell me all the time that Brex makes it easy to control spend before it happens, automate annoying tasks and optimize their finances. Because listen, at the end of the day, Brex helps them make every dollar count. So if you're a fan of smart businesses too, check out [e-mail] metrics, that's brex.com metrics.

[CJ]

That totally checks out. And I want to double down on the fintech portion of Grab's business model. I was looking at your earnings and congrats. It's one of the fastest growing segments and I'm curious on how the banking services drive the flywheel effect for the rest of the business model.

[Peter Ooi]

So let me kind of explain a little bit how we think about the fintech products and we have banking products and non banking products. So becoming a super app. One of the big advantage of being a super app is that you create this ecosystem, right? And the monetization touch points, you have multiple entry points in terms of how you monetize the marketplace. And when I say the marketplace, we're a three sided marketplace in most places because we have merchants, we have customers and we have drivers also our drivers who deliver everything from passengers to food to everything else. So this ecosystem that you can create for the fintech side, what do we do is we actually, for example, we lend money to drivers, right? We have a captive audience of drivers. They all need working capital. They all, because a lot of these drivers are unable to get a loan in a traditional sense because think of it, 60% of Southeast Asians underbanked or underserved. The penetration of credit card is very low in Southeast Asia. Most Southeast Asians don't have credit cards. Right. So again, everything to them is cash, oil or cashless through a digital wallet effectively. So how do we then help these folks is because we know these drivers, they're on our platform, we know how much they earn. I'm willing to actually underwrite them and able to give them some loans to help them also. And that benefits them, benefits retention as these drivers also. So it's a win win for them. We do the same for merchants also. We offer loans to merchants, we offer loans also to our consumers who we can credit score also at the same time. So how we do that, because we have the data like we know how much they're buying, we know what food they're eating, we know where they go. Right. We're on the right Hayley. We kind of know, we kind of like profile the customer from the habits and their transaction with us also. And we're able to actually credit score a particular customer that we are willing to offer a loan, offer other services to them. So that's how the fintech comes in actually. It's another monetization for our marketplace in addition to other products that we also, we offer to all these customers.

[CJ]

That's such a logical business step to make because you have asymmetrical information in the sense that a bank wouldn't have on how good of a business is this to underwrite? Like, you know how many trips the driver does per day. And also you know that you're making them a stickier node in your network by giving them the resources to succeed. It has two implicit benefits in the sense that you help them drive more business. And then you also are making a really good bet because you know how solid their work ethic and have all the data points on it.

[Peter Ooi]

Exactly. It's actually a network effect because these drivers on the platform, we effectively know how much they're earning each day. We know how much the merchants are also earning from our platform also. We kind of have their digital wallet on our platform also. These customers, these drivers of these merchants, the reason why they actually are borrowers of us, because they're not able to get other loans to their traditional sense. They can't just walk up to a bank say hey, I want to get a loan. They don't have credit cards. Again, credit cards are not very popular in Southeast Asia. So for other sources of capital, they come to grab. And again, for when we offer these Cash or loans to them, their retention is up and the productivity is up. So it's a really win win for both sides.

[CJ]

I feel like all companies, if they're around long enough, they see themselves evolve into a fintech in some way, shape or form over time. I'm curious, what was the first step to becoming one? Was it underwriting the drivers? Like what was the layer cake strategy to dip your toes into the water?

[Peter Ooi]

Yeah, we actually started with payments. Digital payments was the first foray into fintech for us. And what we were trying to solve is trying to get Southeast Asians folks to move from cash to cashless.

[CJ]

Got it.

[Peter Ooi]

You know, strange enough, actually about a third of our transactions even up to today is still cash. So you take it, you book a car for ride hailing and at the end of the ride you give cash to the driver. Like it still happens in Southeast Asia.

[CJ]

That's crazy. I have no cash in my wallet right now.

[Peter Ooi]

If you checked exactly right. Especially the older generation in Southeast Asia are still using a lot of cash. So we were trying to actually move people away from cash. It was not safe. It's dangerous for drivers to carry cash. Actually Covid, when Covid happened, it really accelerated the cashless in Southeast Asia. Like governments were stepping in and say look, we got to move to cashless now digital wallet. So it really helped us. Now the penetration is much more higher. So first of all, for these, this cashless payments for us, it was a way also to make sure that we get to see the level of transaction these customers are able to top up their digital wallet. Right. Gives us a bit of a feel for customers, propensity to spend and et cetera. And the second product was really lending for us. And how we started was Tribus. Like it's a captive audience for us. And we know again just how much they earn. We have their wallet, et cetera, they pay us on a daily basis. So it's a really nice product for us as an adjacency. And then we've added other products in addition to that along the way.

[CJ]

Thanks for that explanation. That totally brought it into focus for me. Peter, I want to go back to the monthly transacting users, the +40 million, not a small number. How important is it to get them using multiple layers of the ecosystem? Do they usually have one entry point and then they start using other components of it? Or just how do you, how do you think about monthly transacting users and their importance?

[Peter Ooi]

Sure, yeah. What we've seen actually grab has evolved now to what's back in the, in the early years or even when we had a lot more other products, more of a transactional product services where you know, we were so happy when customer use one product or two products. And now actually it's more of a lifetime value in terms of how we look at a user now again about 2/3 of our user base of 42 million use two or three products for us which is really important. And again part of that is a lot of the cross selling opportunities for us. Frequency has been really important for us for customers to come back. We have subscription now as part of our offering today. Kind of similar to DashPass, Uber one type where on the delivery side especially you get lower delivery fees, sometimes you get free delivery, et cetera. And also that helps retention. It has helped frequency for us. It also has helped basket size for us also. And all these different touch points has been really critical in terms of nudging users to really try out all different products services. So and what we want to see over time is actually more and more users using all parts of different products and services. So like in mobility today, you know, you'd be surprised that a lot of our customers today we have a lot of choice in our products that you know, sometimes they're very price sensitive. So we understand that. So we have offerings which are a lot more lower. Lower ticket size like our two wheel service is a prime example of that where it's affordable for most Southeast Asian out there. And also with Southeast Asian two wheels is very popular because traffic is crappy here, it's horrible. And also the roads can be very skinny, the cars can't fit and you need to get a point A to point B. What do we do? We go through these little lanes to get them into point A to point B in the safest route obviously. But these two wheels become a very important form of transportation in Southeast Asia.

[CJ]

The way you describe the ecosystem and getting a monthly transacting user to try out new things makes me think that you're more willing to pay to acquire a user because you know that their lifetime value can be increased and spread amongst multiple products.

[Peter Ooi]

Exactly. Yeah. So when we get a user base on top of the funnel, it's usually usually a mobility entry point, is usually our food delivery entry point. It could be they're using our grabpay to pay something at the florist or at the 7:11. That's an entry point for us. And what we do is we capture that customer and we try to cross sell the customer. Now usually the Cross selling can happen much later, but usually also what happens is if I offer you a food delivery and you order something, I would nudge you to, hey, do you want to add something to this? Do you want to add a bottle of Coke with it? You want to add this, you want to add that, right? All the cross selling opportunities happens and we started to cross sell also between food and grocery. Now we are also starting to do cross selling between food to mobility and mobility to food, et cetera. And these are really important as part of our lifetime value play.

[CJ]

Yeah, and what strikes me is that the distinction between buyers and sellers is a lot more fluid on your marketplace than others. So to give you an example, I'm a sneaker head. I love buying sneakers on applications like Goat or stockx, but I've never sold sneakers, so I'm just a buyer there. But on Grab, I mean, you could be a driver, but also be using the financial services. You could be a driver who needs a ride somewhere too. So like there's this interplay between people who are both buyers and sellers, which expands the lifetime value of users everywhere.

[Peter Ooi]

Exactly, C.J. because the way we think about lifetime value is just not the customer who's using our product, but also the drivers themselves are using our products. They're consumers of our product. Also, they're still, you know, they got to eat, so they got to get food delivered also to their house. And also the beauty, when I think about unique about our business, Southeast Asia, is these drivers are both doing passenger and also are doing all the other forms of deliveries, right? So if you think about it, which actually is a scale and it's unique in a way because there's always picks and troughs, right? If you were just doing food delivery, for example, breakfast, lunch and dinner, right. Those are your peak times. And what happens to these drivers during those off times, right? Then they're idling effectively. What do we do as grab? Because we have so many services, the drivers are always on the job, right? You're doing a passenger, then you're doing a food delivery, then you go back to a passenger, then you do a parcel delivery, then you do rushing delivery. So the throughput of these drivers in a day is maximized and that enables them to earn more also at the same time on an ecosystem. So their lifetime value also improves. Which is very, very different to say if you're just a single vertical user, if you're just only doing food delivery or just ride hailing for an example. So that's very unique in our model. And we're able to amortize the cost of these drivers totally.

[CJ]

And I feel that Instacart, at least in the US is becoming an advertising company. I was reading through their S1 when they, when they IPO and that was the fastest growing and highest margin business line that they had. And Uber is becoming an advertising company in a lot of ways that happens to give rides. What does the advertising opportunity look like for Grab going forward?

[Peter Ooi]

Yeah, advertising for us actually is another product part of our super app offering, which is primarily to our consumers, but also to our merchants. It's more of a younger business for us, about three years old for us. And today we use penetration rate as a way to benchmark how we're progressing in terms of ads. It's one point. So the ads revenue is about 1.6% of our delivery is gross merchandise value, which is to us is still quite small. If I compare that to say dash, for an example, I think dash is over 2%. Instacart I think is the north of 3%. So I think we still have ways to go. Now there's a lot of opportunities in the advertising space for us in Southeast Asia especially. A lot about the advertising that we do are basically on food today. But if you think like you mentioned Instacart, grocery delivery for us is like still a small business today. And there's a lot of Runway and upside as we start to actually grow that food through delivery business because that is more transacting users also that we can target with FMCG backing for us and using a lot of very targeted ads at specific FMCG items. And that could actually also another layer of growth for us in the advertising revenue line.

[CJ]

That's exciting. I'm really, I'm really pumped to see what you'll do there. Peter, I can tell that you're really passionate about Southeast Asia as a tech hub. And I want to transition to talk a bit about what you're seeing there because I feel like Southeast Asia often gets overlooked as a region as a hub for tech talent and innovation. And there's this focus on India and China and looking at the populations there and tech adoption. But Southeast Asia often gets overlooked as this monolith that people don't understand or maybe take the time to dig into. Why do you think that's the case?

[Peter Ooi]

Yeah, again to your point, a lot of the, A lot of investors, for example, also a lot of the community really outside of Southeast Asia really focused on India, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and also definitely China. So there's a Lot of focus around that area. And people kind of forget about the south. The south of these countries, right? We exist 660 million people. But what you're seeing is because, like I said, because it's a younger generation. And what you're finding is a lot of these younger generations are going to school, going to get the education for those who can afford it outside of Southeast Asia. Like, they're going to the us they're going to uk, they're going to Japan, right, To. To get their education. And what happens is that you've got these new influx of talent. That's if you compare, say five, ten years to where we are today. The talent pool in Southeast Asia, especially in tech, has just gone much, much better. The pool has really broadened and it's pretty good holiday destination for a lot of things. You can do a lot of fun stuff here also. So I think it's drawing just a different crowd domestically, just homegrown, but also it's drawing also folks from outside coming into Southeast Asia. I mean, obviously we've seen it directly. We're obviously a big employer of a lot of the tech scene here in Southeast Asia. And we're used to be just Singapore because that's where we headquarters, like you just recruit everything out of Singapore. But now we have tech centers in Vietnam, we have tech centers in Indonesia, very big one. We have tech centers in Malaysia because the talent there is getting much, much better. And that's great because this is what we want actually in southeast Asia.

[CJ]

Well, 10 years ago, I was helping a software company create a footprint in Asia, in Southeast Asia in particular. And we chose Singapore as the jumping off point. We thought it would be easier to localize the tech. There were more English speakers. But to your point, I think there are a lot more cities that you could start and branch out and make that kind of your landing ground.

[Peter Ooi]

That's right, yeah. If you look at the tech scene today, used to be just Singapore. Everything was birthed out of Singapore. Now you got tech scenes. Indonesia's big in tech scenes. A lot of unicorns. Also in Indonesia, you've got tech scenes coming out of Vietnam, now in Thailand, which is great to see. And part of that also is more capital also now VCs are really supporting the community there. And also, again, a lot of these folks, a lot of these tech entrepreneurs also been exposed to the US They've seen how it works and they can adopt and adapt some of those learnings back to their homeland. And that's great to see. And the tech Scene is actually now more and more becoming a really growing sector in Southeast Asia.

[CJ]

Well, speaking of that, if you had to give advice to a tech company in the west who's looking to come over, what advice would you give them based on your experience there? And you could hit on it in any way. It could be the execution of how to go to market in the playbook there, or just cultural norms to be aware of.

[Peter Ooi]

It's a very big population size. So again, it could be overwhelming. Again, starting a city, because it's a lot of cities. Start in a country, pick a country, you know, because people here, most of them speak English anyway. So you've got Singapore usually is a very popular hub to start because it's very friendly, very business friendly. And the tax laws and the compliance laws are all very, very friendly to business. Everybody speaks English here. So like you said. But your software company that you mentioned 10 years ago, it's a natural place for people to gravitate and really start here. Bit expensive to live, hence why, you know, people are not transitioning out to even hubs like Indonesia or even Malaysia is another one. Malaysia is also a very English speaking country. There's a lot of folks who actually studied abroad. That's also another good launching pad for startups. But really I think one of the things that we've learned in Grab is actually really localize your product. I think that's really important to really understand the local needs and really just manufacture the products around their product market, fit around kind of what they, what they need and want. And what you do though in that one country may not work in another Southeast Asian country. So you got to go in there, say, okay, what are the behaviors of the country, how do people interact, et cetera. And you need to adapt to those things.

[CJ]

That totally makes sense. That totally makes sense. And I have to applaud you too because I was reading through the earnings and one of the core principles it seems like the company operates by is to actually increase the economic activity in the area. So you seem very driven to helping the people succeed and kind of build their own mini businesses within Grab.

[Peter Ooi]

That's actually a credit to our founder, Anthony Tan, who's our CEO. Also, our mission is to drive Southeast Asia forward. And that's on his heart, it's on his arms, on his chest. Like it's all about driving Southeast Asia forward and how what he does or how he views it is at. How do we empower Southeast Asians, whether especially for the marginalized and also for those who are also for those who are in the formal economy, if you look at our drivers today, a good portion of our drivers were from the informal economy. Like we are their first kind of job that they've got.

[CJ]

Right.

[Peter Ooi]

And that's really important. And we're able to enrich their lives by earnings on a platform. And also we're able to give them loans also to support their family, put their kids through education. We do a lot of retraining also for drivers to upskill them because they don't want to be drivers for the rest of their lives. They want to do something different. So we help them to reskill these drivers. So that's really important. And also how do we also help merchants? Also Inside there's over 60 million merchants in Southeast Asia. How do we also digitize them? And that's what we've been doing. Actually digitizing these merchants, especially the small mom and pop shop and really putting online on our platform was one of the big steps that a lot of these merchants actually came on. Covid was really an interesting period of time where a lot of the merchants were offline and when Covid hit, they were dying. So we worked with governments. Okay, you know what, we're going to scramble and bring as many merchants, especially food merchants, so they can survive on the grab platform itself. And that's really important. It's core to our mission in how to empower enrich also the Southeast Asians.

[CJ]

The digitization of the merchants, that that's super intriguing because you're basically taking a business that may be a mom and pop store where the awareness is only the people in the surrounding four or five streets and you're giving them increased channels of distribution that they didn't have before.

[Peter Ooi]

Yeah, I mean I have many stories. I visit a lot of the countries and I visit a lot of the merchants and I've met a lot of merchants where before, especially during COVID they only had one store, it was an offline store. And we came in there, brought them in our platform, we gave them a digital device, we gave them digital wallets. And their business now has thrived where they've added 8, 9, 10 stores and a couple of them actually gone public in the local exchange because they've been so successful. There's one pizza chain which has done amazingly well in one country. But that's really core to our founders heart where you know, we've able to actually digitize them, able to also expand their business at the same time. But we still have a long way to go. I think we still have we always say we only serve 1 in 20 Southeast Asians and we can do much more. And this is why our mission still needs to continue on and bring more users and merchants into our platform.

[CJ]

Are there any interactions if you're willing to share one that stick with you? Maybe even the pizza one. Did you say that company went public?

[Peter Ooi]

So there's this pizza chain. When he started it was just one store and again it was like a typical mom and pop shop. And then when it came online it just took off. It was Covid so people needed to eat. And we were able to really just get his business and we promoted his business, we pushed his business. He bought advertising with us and that just started. And from then on he was able to add another store and another store and another store and so on and so on. So he's just expanded that completely. And there's many other stories. There's the chicken rice shop, there's the noodle shop, like the briyani shop. Right. I think. And that's what really matters, like for us really is we digitizing the Southeast Asian economy.

[CJ]

That's amazing. It sounds like the tech truly is pulling people into the future and creating opportunities. And I wanted to hit on that. Can you talk about grabs? Proprietary tech? I know the mapping system is one element of it. I believe it's tailored to local needs.

[Peter Ooi]

Exactly. Again, going back to the localization, which is really important. The map is a very critical piece for us. We were using third party maps and again, Southeast Asia is a very complex road system which sometimes changes on a daily basis. And the road system also disappears sometime and as it comes back, so it's really ever changing. And the third party map that we were using was just inaccurate. Like people were booking a ride, they picked me up here and it was like on the other side, it's like that's a bad customer experience or people were transporting a customer or something. And they wouldn't take the little alley lanes because that particular third party map didn't map. It didn't, didn't exist in the map. And they said, look, this has got to stop. So what do we do? We mapped Southeast Asia. Literally mapped southeast. My goodness, 700 cities now is on our platform. And what that does is actually because it's. And the way we did it was through crowdsourcing. Like we didn't just put these big cars, four wheelers with cameras at the top circling the streets. Like traditionally how third party maps do is we said that's not going to work. Like we have so many Cities and remember these little lanes that these cars will never fit. So what do we do? We said, you know what? We have a lot of drivers. We have 6 million of them, all right? Some of them walk when they do their food delivery, some of them cycle, Some of them have two wheelers, some of them have four wheelers. Why don't we put cameras on them and map it? They're our eyes effectively, right? So it's crowdsourcing, mapping effectively, and we pay them to do it. They can earn more. There's no downside for them. All they got to do is carry a map, right? So what we did was we built our own map, built our cameras, and everything's on the cloud for us. And today what we've got is a very localized Southeast Asia map which is continuously mapping like every second. We get data back from drivers from everywhere because we do so many transactions. And that's really been very unique for us because we can improve routing, we can improve safety also through these routing system. We can monitor the speed because we know how fast they're driving also. And how erratic are they driving also. Right. Also we've started to map indoors because half the battle of food delivery is actually the indoor component. Like, okay, where do I park? Which floor is the restaurant again? Which level is it again? Which exit do I take to get from the mall to the restaurant? Like every second counts for these drivers. So you got to make it efficiently as possible. So we started to map indoors, like malls especially, and apartment complexes. So it's something unique that we do as a technology stack that we do. We also have our own payment stack. We don't use. Third party. Fraud is really very, very prevalent here in Southeast Asia. So we built our own fraud tool internally also. So a lot of these things we just products that we just needed because third party was just not good enough or sufficient enough for us to really scale in the size that we have as our business.

[CJ]

I know it was complicated, but you probably look back at it like this is a competitive moat now. If somebody wants to compete with us, we already built this.

[Peter Ooi]

Exactly. Yeah. It's not easy to replicate what we did from a tech perspective, from a localization perspective. It's very regulated also in the industry that we operate in here to get all those licenses and permissions and all these requirements from states and cities and provinces, everything else. And it's taken 13 years for us to get to where we are today.

[CJ]

I empathize as someone with a terrible sense of direction. I get lost in malls, parking lots, Everywhere.

[Podcast Host]

So I could use your apple.

[CJ]

Peter, I'm going to take you into what we call our long ass lightning round. So the first question I ask everybody, you're a successful guy, but what's an example of something you screwed up on the job? It could be any role you've had in your career.

[Peter Ooi]

I'm really big on forecast accuracy. You can ask my team.

[CJ]

Yeah.

[Peter Ooi]

Peter, pedantic on forecast accuracy. I have a very low tolerance for deltas. And why is that? Because back in my earlier careers, I made a few not good choices when it comes to forecast accuracy. And those could be like simple Excel spreadsheets. And one clear example was, you know when you're trying to guide a business and help them hit a revenue line, that you're on your outlook. And when you screw up on an Excel error or you got your trajectory wrong, your assumption was off. That's bad. Yeah. So that always has been ingrained in my mind. Double check your work and I was my team. How accurate was your forecast? How much were you offered?

[CJ]

Yeah, every forecast is ultimately wrong. It's just a question of how wrong was it exactly. Last one I got for you. If you could tell your younger self something, knowing what you know today, what would you tell them?

[Peter Ooi]

I would say to myself, peter, learn how to code.

[Podcast Host]

Okay.

[Peter Ooi]

In the field that I do in the tech space. I wish I know how to do SQL. I wish I know how to code. I think it would just go as finance people using a lot of data. I think it just gives you superpowers.

[CJ]

That's a great one. We haven't had that one on the show yet. Peter, this has been an absolute pleasure. A blast. You're easy guy to have a conversation with and congrats on all the success so far.

[Peter Ooi]

Thank you cj. It's been fun. Yeah, anytime.

[Podcast Host]

Run the Numbers is a mostly LLC production. Yelling an intro by Fat Joe, artwork by some AI think podcast and video editing is done by cleancast@cleancast IO. Nothing said on this podcast is intended to be business or investment advice. It's the sole opinion of me, a.

[CJ]

Guy who feeds his dog too much.

[Podcast Host]

Ice cream and has a history of net operating losses. Lol. If you like this podcast, please hit subscribe. It would mean a lot to me. And Also check out mostlymetrics.com that's my newsletter where I explore business models and financial metrics. Thanks for riding with me.

[CJ]

Share this with your friends.

[Peter Ooi]

Peace.