Taxi-booking app GrabTaxi said Tuesday it had raised more than $350 million from investors including sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corporation in the Southeast Asian company’s largest ever fundraising round.
GrabTaxi, a Southeast Asia Uber Rival, Raises $350 Million
Among the investors: China’s sovereign wealth fund.
GrabTaxi
Other investors include hedge fund Coatue Management and China’s mobile car-ride hailing company Didi Kuaidi, GrabTaxi said in a statement, adding that it would use the funds to expand its private vehicle hire and motorbike booking services and invest in technology.
Singapore-headquartered GrabTaxi competes with the likes of Uber and Rocket Internet’s Easy Taxi in the city-state and some of the other Southeast Asian markets in which it operates.
The company, which counts Japanese telecom firm SoftBank and a unit of Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings as shareholders, has now raised about $700 million since it was launched in 2012.
It was unclear, however, how much the latest fundraising valued the company.
The use of taxi-hailing apps is growing in Southeast Asia, especially Singapore, one of the most expensive places in the world to own a private car. Heavy traffic in cities such as Manila and Jakarta also makes finding taxis tough, benefiting these apps.
(Reporting By Aradhana Aravindan; Editing by Miral Fahmy)
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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