(via Bloomberg Technology)

(via Bloomberg Technology)

In an interview with Bloomberg Technology, Anthony Tan (MBA 2011) and Hooi Ling Tan (MBA 2011), the cofounders of Grab, chronicle the company’s explosive growth from an idea pitched at an HBS business plan competition through its current state as one of the largest tech startups in Southeast Asia.

The cofounders sat next to one another in Business at the Base of the Pyramid at HBS, where case discussions focused their attention on building businesses with double or triple bottom lines. Those cases sparked Tan and Tan’s common interest in the notion that the mobile phone revolution might help unlock a chronic problem in Southeast Asia: safe and reliable on-demand transportation.

They launched Grab in Malaysia in 2012. In its earliest days, the company offered an app to match available cabs with riders, and it wasn’t an easy sell in the beginning—taxi by taxi, they knocked on drivers’ windows, trying to convince them to join the service. Tan says they went as far as buying smartphones for drivers who didn’t own one.

Now available throughout Southeast Asia, Grab has acquired Uber’s ride-hailing service in the region and has expanded into a “super app,” offering everything from food and parcel delivery, to hotels and airline bookings, and access financial and health services. “It’s a miracle that we are where we are now,” says Anthony Tan.

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