GGV leads $15m round for Southeast Asia taxi-booking app

Qunar, a NASDAQ-listed Chinese travel platform that is majority-owned by Baidu, also participated alongside existing investor Vertex Ventures. Vertex, which is a unit of Temasek Holdings, first invested in GrabTaxi in September of last year and then led a Series A round - said to be worth at least $10 million - in April.

GrabTaxi was set up in Malaysia in 2012 as MyTeksi by two Harvard Business School graduates. They were the runners up in Harvard's 2011 business plan contest.

The app allows users to book taxis operated by any provider, identifying which cars are nearest and which are the most reliable, based on variables such as distance, amount of traffic and customer feedback. It has been downloaded onto more than 1.2 million devices in over 15 cities across Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore.

GrabTaxi claims that more than 250,000 passengers use the service at least once per month, while over 20,000 taxi drivers have registered with it. The company estimates that one in two active taxi drivers in its target region - where the population numbers 600 million - will be part of the network by the end of 2015.

A limousine service called GrabCar has also been launched in several markets.

The new funding will not only be used to support the rollout of GrabTaxi into new cities but also for social initiatives aimed at improving the welfare of taxi drivers, while building loyalty and retention.

Jixun Foo, Shanghai-based managing partner at GGV, will join the company's board of directors. He noted that GrabTaxi in Southeast Asia and Didi Dache in China have the potential to become "the go-to transport app in their regional markets."

GrabTaxi has a direct regional rival in Rocket Internet's Easy Taxi. Global player Uber Taxi - which is reportedly targeting a new round of funding with a valuation of around $10 billion - is also seeking to expand in Southeast Asia, although the business model involves building a fleet of taxis rather than using local providers. 

Didi Dache, which has won backing from internet giant Tencent as well as financial investors, is thought to be in a straight fight in China with rival Kuadi Dache. The latter counts Alibaba Group among its investors.

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• Topics
• Technology
• Southeast Asia
• Venture
• Early-stage
• Southeast Asia
• GGV Capital
• Venture
• TMT
• Consumer