Despite a sluggish market, Grab expects no significant layoffs

The largest ride-hailing & food delivery company in Southeast Asia, Grab, is selectively hiring while restraining its ambitions to enter the financial services industry.
Grab does not anticipate needing to implement mass layoffs, as some competitors have done.
According to Grab’s chief operating officer, Alex Hungate, early in the year, the company was concerned about a worldwide recession and took great caution and judgement when making any hires.
As a result, the company did not reach the “desperate” position of a hiring block or mass layoffs.
Hungate, 56, stated that around mid-year, they undertook some sort of specialised reorganisations but are aware that other businesses have been undertaking mass layoffs, so they do not put themselves in that category, in his first appearance since entering Singapore-based Grab Holdings Ltd. in January.

Every job was now a far bigger decision than it formerly was, but the company was still searching for positions in data science, geospatial technology, as well as other specialised fields, he added.
They want to be certain that they are saving money. Making a hire has undoubtedly become more difficult.
At the end of 2021, Grab, a well-known brand in Southeast Asia for a decade, employed roughly 8,800 people. Like its competitors, it has benefited from the COVID-19 pandemic’s surge in food services while ride-hailing has suffered.
Demand for food delivery is decreasing as economies expand, while ride-hailing hasn’t fully recovered. As uncertainties, inflation, slower growth, and increasing interest rates have emerged, so have tech prices.
The largest e-commerce company in Southeast Asia, Shopee, recently reduced staff in several nations and shut down a few international businesses after parent company Sea (SE.N) disclosed rising losses and abandoned its annual e-commerce projection.
As Grab scrambles to become profitable, Hungate, a senior in the financial service, logistics, and food industries, has led a drive away from low-profit business lines.
Losses for the second quarter decreased from $801 million to $572 million. However, it reduced its forecast for the year’s gross merchandise volume last month, blaming a strong currency and declining demand for food delivery.
Grab announced last month that it was closing dozens of “dark stores”—distribution centres for on-demand groceries—and was delaying the launch of its “cloud kitchen,” a network of centralised facilities for delivery.
Hungate revealed the financial services sector is the other area where they have considerably tightened their strategic intent. In this sector, they have seen considerable growth in non-bank lending, wallets, and payments both off and on their platform.
This year, Grab restructured its fintech division to concentrate on more lucrative areas, and they covered the departure of a few senior executives.
Currently, Grab’s major focus is on selling insurance and financing products on its network to merchants & drivers who frequently pay back with the platform’s revenue streams.
Hungate added: the business mix will change to favour better margins as they make this transition.

More than five million licensed drivers and much more over two million merchants use the Grab platform, which runs in 480 cities across eight countries.
After a lengthy five-year battle, it purchased Uber’s Southeast Asian operation in 2018, grabbing the attention of the entire world.
By providing banking services and other products in major areas alongside partner Singapore Telecommunications (STEL.SI), Grab is relying on the expansion of financial services.
After a record-breaking $40 billion acquisition with a blank-check company, it went public on the Nasdaq in December. View More
Given the heightened scrutiny of accounts and the desire to satisfy shareholders, Hungate claimed it was “excellent timing” for the business to revisit how it spends money.
Grab now has a market price of $10.6 billion after its shares have fallen by approximately 60% this year.