(Bloomberg) – A few years after Grab Holdings Inc. launched in 2012, Anthony Tan received advice from Jack Ma. The co-founder of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. told the entrepreneur that life is a tsunami. Get ready for the crash if you’re going, he said.
In 2020, it all happened. The coronavirus has locked up cities across Southeast Asia. The demand for a ride, an important enterprise, has plunged. Around December, his grand plan to merge with arch-enemy Gojek collapses.
Tan was not ready to go up with the public. Earlier this year, a connection introduced him to investor Brad Gerstner, the founder of Altimeter Capital Management, in Silicon Valley. The two men, though on either side of the world, have much in common. Both were alumni of Harvard Business School, and both deviated more easily paths in life to start their own businesses.
The pair announced the world’s largest SPAC deal in about three months, which will see the Grab list in the US at a valuation of almost $ 40 billion.
“A year ago, the world looked like it was going to end,” Tan, 39, said. “As an entrepreneur, you go through these crazy lows and crazy highs.”
In an interview on Zoom, Tan remembers that Gerstner called some general friends to go see him. These include Rich Barton, the entrepreneur who founded Zillow Group Inc. lei, and Uber Technologies Inc. ‘s CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, a board member of Grab. Tan passed the test.
Read more: Singapore’s Grab to List in US with $ 40 billion SPAC deal
The merger of the Grab-Altimeter acquisition company for special purposes emphasizes the importance attached to the top end of the technology world, and how graduating from universities like Harvard continues to help open doors.
Gerstner also invested in Coupang Inc., the Korean e-commerce giant founded by Bom Kim, who attended Harvard Business School around the same time as Tan before Kim dropped out. Grab rival Gojek was founded by Nadiem Makarim, a classmate of Tan’s Harvard Business School, who is now Indonesia’s Minister of Education.
So many billions were ‘created out of that class’, Gerstner, 49, said.
Their three companies already have a combined valuation of about $ 130 billion, including nearly $ 80 billion for Coupang, following the initial public offering in March.
“The world is shrinking,” Gerstner said. “Some of the most exciting leadership today is in regions like Southeast Asia.”
Born into a wealthy business family in Malaysia, Tan was inspired to start Grab during his time at Harvard Business School from 2009 to 2011. He discontinued the family business, Tan Chong Motor Holdings Bhd., And started a taxi service. , known as MyTeksi with his Harvard classmate Tan Hooi Ling. Later, Grab would expand to businesses, including food delivery and online payments, as it became a so-called super-app in Southeast Asia.
Gerstner was at Harvard about a decade earlier, from 1999 to 2000. The American investor grew up in a small Indiana town and admired Warren Buffett. He started his career as a security lawyer dealing with IPOs. After obtaining his MBA from Harvard, he joined the venture capital firm General Catalyst and later founded and sold three companies.
In the depths of the global financial crisis in 2008, he founded Altimeter Capital on his own, raising only $ 3 million raised by friends and family. Today, the firm, which invests in public and private technology companies, manages $ 15 billion. It is backed by tech players including Expedia Group Inc., Uber and software firm Snowflake Inc.
Tan, an institution at the World Economic Forum, has always emphasized the importance of business partnerships. According to people who know him, he spends a lot of time on networks. On the eve of the merger announcement, Tan said he went out to dinner with a trading partner.
When in Indonesia, Tan drops off his black t-shirt and puts on a traditional batik shirt. He addresses conference guests in Indonesian. When he visited Tokyo to attend a SoftBank Group Corp. conference in 2019, he bowed deeply after Masayoshi Son, founder of SoftBank, his most ardent supporter, introduced himself as a ‘new superstar in the AI’ era ‘.
SoftBank has invested about $ 3 billion in Grab, but relations with Son have cooled after the Japanese company put Grab under pressure to combine with Gojek.
Tan said his relationship with Son is still close. During the Zoom interview, he took out his phone and read a text he had received from Son about the merger. ‘Anthony, thank you very much for the update. I am very happy to hear that the IPO is going well, “Tan read.
Gerstner, meanwhile, says he is impressed with how Grab survived the pandemic – and through his decision, like his own, to plow his own.
Grab ‘finally chose an independent path’, he said. “It’s simply one of the largest Internet companies doing one of the biggest IPOs of the year.”
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