Skift Take
Grab’s $100 million investment in Oyo is just the start of a strategy to have a tag-team under the same major investor, which is leveraging the strengths of each member of its portfolio. Expect to see more "teams of unicorns" attacking incumbents in the next year or so.
Grab’s $100 million investment in Oyo is designed to help the budget hotel chain scale quicker in Southeast Asia and is in line with SoftBank Group’s vision for portfolio companies to help one another and soar together. SoftBank is a major investor in both the ridehailing company and hospitality player.
A stake in Oyo, on the other hand, will help Grab inch closer towards its ambition to be the everyday super app used by Southeast Asian consumers to book, and pay, for a range of services using its e-wallet, GrabPay. Travel and hotel booking is a key service and a core growth sector — particularly the budget hotel segment, according to a recent joint Google/Temasek study on the internet economy in Southeast Asia.
“Many hotels in Southeast Asia, particularly in the budget segment and in ‘off-the-beaten’ path locations, still receive the majority of bookings through offline channels, though they are poised to increasingly go online in the years ahead,” said the study, which estimates online hotel booking in the region is worth $14 billion this year and rising at a compounded annual growth rate of 18 percent.
Birds of the same feather flock together
