Anthony Tan and Grab: excellence as service

Who is Anthony Tan?

Anthony Tan is Malaysian and based in Singapore. He co-founded Grab with Tan Hooi Ling after meeting her at Harvard Business School. He studied at the University of Chicago before his Harvard MBA, and FDE notes that his great-grandfather was a taxi driver. He comes from a family car business, and he chose to build something that served drivers and passengers rather than simply selling vehicles.

How did Grab start?

According to FDE's episode notes, Grab started at Harvard Business School as an answer to a specific problem: women's safety in taxis in Southeast Asia. The first product was a way to book a known, trackable driver. From that narrow, human problem grew one of the region's largest technology companies. At the time of the FDE episode it had 198 million app downloads, 9 million drivers, 352 cities in 8 countries and a US$14 billion valuation.

What does "serving 9 million entrepreneurs" mean?

The title of the FDE film changes the usual way of seeing Grab. Its drivers, delivery partners and merchants aren't just "supply". Each one is a small entrepreneur running their own tiny business. Excellence, in this view, isn't polish for its own sake. It is building a platform good enough that millions of small business owners can feed their families through it.

The 4Hs: Hunger, Heart, Honour, Humility

Grab's four company values show where faith and leadership meet:

• Hunger: the drive to keep improving and to win.
• Heart: caring about the people the company serves.
• Honour: integrity, doing what you say.
• Humility: holding success loosely and staying teachable.

His guiding verse is Matthew 25:40: "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."

Faith under pressure: Grab in COVID-19

When the pandemic hit, ride volumes fell by around 90%. FDE recounts how Grab moved more than 150,000 drivers into delivery and onboarded more than 80,000 merchants, keeping income flowing to the people who depended on the platform. It is a case study in the Foundation Course's idea of ministry in deed: loving your neighbour through the way the business actually works.

Why this story lands in Singapore

For many founders in our rooms, Grab is the local proof that a Southeast Asian company can reach global scale. Anthony Tan's story adds a harder question: whom is the scale for? That question comes up again and again in Faith Driven Singapore sessions. One founder told Cohort 3 that "the problem is the same… but how you address it, as a believer and a non-believer, is very different. We need to have a serving heart" (watch).

Singapore has its own FDE film too. Endowus co-founder Samuel Rhee's profile, I Sacrifice, We Win, was screened at Cohort 2's fifth session. Read more in Faith Driven Entrepreneurs in Asia.

Lessons for founders

1. Start with a person, not a market. Grab started with a woman who needed to get home safely.
2. Define excellence by who it serves. Nine million small entrepreneurs is a better north star than a valuation.
3. Write your values down, and make humility one of them.
4. In a crisis, protect the people who depend on you before you protect the metrics.

Sources

1. Faith Driven Entrepreneur — Excellence Matters
2. FDE Podcast Ep. 131 — From a Place of Helping People to a $14B Valuation with Anthony Tan
3. FDE — Anthony Tan
4. FDE Asia Podcast Ep. 2
5. YouTube — Excellence Matters | Serving 9 Million Entrepreneurs | Anthony Tan
6. Salt&Light — Grab co-founder Anthony Tan on what keeps him accountable