A handful of years following launching Grab Holdings Inc. in 2012, Anthony Tan got a piece of guidance from Jack Ma. The co-founder of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. told the entrepreneur that life is a tsunami. When you happen to be up on the wave, get prepared for the crash, he mentioned.
In 2020, that all came to pass. The coronavirus sent cities across Southeast Asia into lockdown. Demand for ride-hailing, a essential business enterprise, plunged. Then about December, its major program to merge with arch rival Gojek collapsed.
Tan wasn’t prepared to give up on going public. Early this year, a connection introduced him to the Silicon Valley investor Brad Gerstner, the founder of Altimeter Capital Management. The two males, although from opposite sides of the globe, had a lot in prevalent. Both have been Harvard Business School alumni, and each had eschewed a lot easier paths in life to set up their personal firms.
Within about 3 months, the pair had announced the world’s most significant SPAC deal, which will see Grab list in the U.S. at a valuation of practically $40 billion.
“A year ago, the world looked like it was going to end,” Tan, 39, mentioned. “As an entrepreneur, you go through these crazy lows and crazy highs.”
In an interview more than Zoom, Tan recalls that following the initial introduction was produced, Gerstner referred to as some prevalent close friends to verify him out. They integrated Rich Barton, the entrepreneur who leads Zillow Group Inc., and Uber Technologies Inc. Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi, a Grab board member. Tan passed the test.
The Grab-Altimeter specific objective acquisition enterprise merger underscores the value that is placed on connections at the leading of the technologies globe, and how graduating from universities like Harvard nevertheless assists to open doors.
Gerstner has also invested in Coupang Inc., the Korean e-commerce giant founded by Bom Kim, who attended Harvard Business School about the identical time as Tan just before Kim dropped out. Grab rival Gojek was founded by Nadiem Makarim, a Harvard Business School classmate of Tan who’s now Indonesia’s education minister.
So quite a few billions have been “created out of that class,” Gerstner, 49, mentioned.
Their 3 corporations currently have a combined valuation of about $130 billion, which includes practically $80 billion for Coupang following its initial public supplying in March.
“The world is shrinking,” Gerstner mentioned. “Some of the most exciting leadership today is in regions like Southeast Asia.”
Tan, born into a wealthy business enterprise household in Malaysia, got the inspiration to begin Grab through his time at Harvard Business School from 2009 to 2011. He quit the household business enterprise, Tan Chong Motor Holdings Bhd. and began a taxi-hailing service recognized as MyTeksi with his Harvard classmate Tan Hooi Ling. Later Grab would expand into companies which includes meals delivery and on the net payments as it became a so-referred to as super-app in Southeast Asia.
Gerstner was in Harvard about a decade earlier, from 1999 to 2000. The American investor grew up in a compact town in Indiana, admiring Warren Buffett. He began his profession as a securities lawyer handling IPOs. After obtaining his MBA from Harvard, he joined the venture capital firm General Catalyst and later founded and sold 3 corporations.
In the depths of the international monetary crisis in 2008, he set out on his personal, establishing Altimeter Capital with just $3 million raised from close friends and household. Today the firm, which invests in public and private technologies corporations, manages $15 billion. He’s backed tech players which includes Expedia Group Inc., Uber and computer software firm Snowflake Inc.
Tan, a fixture at the World Economic Forum, has often stressed the value of business enterprise partnerships. He spends a lot of his time networking, according to men and women who know him. On the eve of the merger announcement, Tan mentioned he was out getting dinner with a merchant companion.
When in Indonesia, Tan abandons his signature black t-shirt and puts on a standard batik shirt. He addresses conference guests in Indonesian. When going to Tokyo to attend a SoftBank Group Corp. conference in 2019, he bowed deeply following SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son, his most early ardent supporter, introduced him as “a new superstar in the AI era.”
SoftBank invested about $3 billion in Grab, but relations with Son cooled following the Japanese enterprise place stress on Grab to combine with Gojek, according to men and women familiar with the matter.
Tan mentioned his connection with Son is nevertheless close. During the Zoom interview, he took out his phone and study aloud a text that he mentioned he received from Son about the merger. “Anthony, thank you so much for the update. I’m really happy to hear that the IPO is going well,” Tan study.
Gerstner, meanwhile, says he’s impressed by how Grab persevered by means of the pandemic — and by its choice, like his personal, to plough its personal furrow.
Grab “ultimately chose an independent path,” he mentioned. “It’s simply one of the biggest internet companies doing one of the biggest IPOs of the year.”
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