Grab Raises $2.3 Billion Valuation To Compete With Uber In Southeast Asia

Grab, the Singapore-based ridesharing service that is Uber’s largest competitor in Southeast Asia, is negotiating to raise a new round of founding that would value the company at around $2.3 billion, according to TechCrunch.

Last year, when the company raised $350 million in a Series E round of funding that included an investment from Didi Chuxing (China’s largest ridesharing service, which recently purchased Uber’s competitor business in China), it was valued at between $1.5 billion and $1.6 billion.

Grab has been negotiating the funding for “a number of months,” according to TechCrunch, but the deal has not yet closed and is waiting on “secondary share sales from existing backers,” which could ultimately lower the company’s total valuation number.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Didi and SoftBank, a Japanese-based telecommunications company, are expected to lead the new round of funding, which could be anywhere from $600 million to $1 billion.

Based on investor documents from last year that TechCrunch said it obtained, Grab predicted it would burn through about $111 million in the third quarter of 2015, which amounts to more than $35 million a month, while the ridesharing service said it had about $606 million in available cash on hand.

Grab is an on-demand mobile ridesharing app that provides taxis, private cars and motorcycle rides to users in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Those same investment documents that TechCrunch said it got its hands on forecasted that the company would make about $31 million in net revenue in 2015, but that number would climb to $193 million in 2016 and $526 million in 2017. Grab also told investors that it expected to be providing 3.5 million rides a day in Southeast Asia by the end of 2017.