Uber Bye Bye - 越南

Uber is selling its Southeast Asia business to competitor Grab

Uber is officially exiting Southeast Asia. The ride-hail company has agreed
to sell its regional business to its primary competitor, Grab.

The sale price wasn’t disclosed, but as part of the deal, Uber will be
getting a 27.5 percent stake in the company, described as worth “several
billion dollars” by Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi in an email sent to
employees. He will also be joining Grab’s board.

Grab, backed by SoftBank and former Uber competitor Didi, will also inherit
500 Uber employees across the region, according to an email Khosrowshahi sent
to staff.

Grab has raised more than $4 billion to date and was last valued at $6
billion. Beyond its car and taxi-hailing services, the company also has a
payments platform called GrabPay and recently launched a financial services
platform. As part of the merger, Grab will also be acquiring Uber’s
food-delivery business, UberEats, in Southeast Asia.

“I’m conscious that much of the hard work happened before I arrived, and I
want to recognize the operations you have built across these eight countries,
” Khosrowshahi wrote in an email to Southeast Asia employees. “After
investing $700 million in the region, we will hold a stake worth several
billion dollars, and strategic ownership in what we believe will be the
winner in an important global region.”

This is the third major market Uber has exited through a deal of this kind.
In August 2016, China-based ride-hail behemoth Didi acquired Uber’s business
in the country. In July 2017, Uber also pulled its operations out of Russia
by merging with top competitor Yandex.Taxi.

In his email to staff, Khosrowshahi said this transaction will help the
company focus on the core markets like India, Latin America and the Middle
East.

“It is fair to ask whether consolidation is now the strategy of the day,
given this is the third deal of its kind, from China to Russia and now
Southeast Asia,” Khosrowshahi wrote. “The answer is no. One of the
potential dangers of our global strategy is that we take on too many battles
across too many fronts and with too many competitors. This transaction now
puts us in a position to compete with real focus and weight in the core
markets where we operate, while giving us valuable and growing equity stakes
in a number of big and important markets where we don’t.”

The deal also sheds light on how SoftBank and its Vision Fund could seek to
manage looming conflicts of interest within its quickly growing portfolio.
While long a backer in Grab, this sale occurred just two months after
SoftBank finalized a separate deal to acquire 15 percent of Uber. Talks about
merged operations in Southeast Asia began almost immediately afterward.

SoftBank has publicly encouraged Uber to focus on the United States and
Europe.

Going forward, the company doesn’t expect to make more deals wherein it
acquires a minority stake and pulls its operations from a major market, a
source familiar told Recode. That’s partly because the executive team is
confident in its position in places like India and the Middle East where Uber
faces competition from well-funded players Ola and Careem, respectively.


Uber’s agreement with Grab is slightly different from the company’s
transactions with both Didi and Yandex. Didi invested $1 billion in Uber at
the time of the transaction; that won’t be the case with Grab. As part of
the Yandex merger, the two companies created a joint venture in which Yandex
had a majority stake. Grab, instead, is acquiring all of Uber’s Southeast
Asia assets and folding it into its own operations.

The complexities of operating in Southeast Asia are often underplayed. The
region is composed of eight countries with distinct markets and economies. In
other words, what works in Singapore may not always work in Vietnam and vice
versa.

In Singapore, for example, Grab offers 11 distinct services to consumers —
like GrabNow which allows a rider to hail a cab off the street and then
connect their app with the driver to book a ride — and just six in Vietnam.
In Vietnam, on the other hand, Grab operates a motorcycle-hailing service
called GrabBike that is not available in Singapore.

When Uber first began expanding globally at breakneck pace, the company often
simply transplanted the business model and offerings that worked in the U.S.
to these new markets. That proved not to work in many places especially as
Uber faced off against players that were native to those markets like Didi
and Grab.

Grab has long touted its hyperlocal advantage over Uber. That deep knowledge
of the nuances of each of the eight countries arguably helped the company
expand outside of car and taxi-hailing and into payments and financial
services. This merger is an indication that Uber recognized that advantage.

心得：
Uber退出東南亞市場，把業務賣給Grab.
Grab在軟體服務與經營策略上比Uber更有彈性。

ref：

https://www.recode.net/2018/3/25/17162972/uber-grab-southeast-asia-sale-acquisition-taxi-ride-share-dara-khosrowshahi

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