In this episode, filmed at the Builders + Innovators Summit in Asia, Grab Co-Founder Hooi Ling Tan discusses growing the ride-hailing platform in Southeast Asia and how digitizing the region’s economy has helped empower both drivers and customers.
On empowering the region: “We started with transportation. We started with mobility, but there is so much more right now, whether it’s financial inclusion, whether it’s empowering micro-entrepreneurs and small entrepreneurs, whether it’s just making health care and education better. There is so much more that we can do and that they have seen as consistently [working] hard towards and [taking] action on at speed and skill.”
On growing Southeast Asia’s digital economy: “We are a platform company and that platform consists of technology infrastructure, people infrastructure and operational on-the-ground infrastructure. I remember when we first started a company, I had to go do training sessions with our drivers… to help teach them how to use a smartphone. They’d never seen one before… [They] had no idea how to turn on Wi-Fi, what GPS was… Those problems still exist. So, how do we then build processes and infrastructure and operations that are based on those norms?”
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