E99 – The Impulso Podcast – Shopee’s US$4.6 billion lending business

Building on our discussion of Sea Groups Q3 earnings, this week we unpack Sea Group’s US$4.6B loan book, which has grown 30% QoQ while keeping non-performing loans low. 

Tune in as we break down how Sea Money leverages Shopee’s customer data to assess credit risk, fueling growth for both its digital financial arm and Shopee, with BNPL services encouraging users to finance larger ticket items. 

On the other hand, Grab’s loan book, although smaller—at just 10% of Sea’s loan book—has potential. While Grab’s user base skews more premium and its ride-hailing model sees fewer transactions than e-commerce, it’s steadily growing. With 41.9 million monthly transacting users and expanding services across income segments, Grab is creating new opportunities in digital finance.

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcast 

 

[AI-generated transcript]

Jianggan: The only reason why Sabrina uses 

Jianggan: credit card is 

Sabrina: To collect 

Jianggan: Not for the credit. It’s to collect miles and points. 

Sabrina: What can I do with the credit? Oh, but Cause I don’t need credit now. I’m not I’m not taking any loans. I have no big purchasers to buy.

Jianggan: But credit is a good thing, right? I mean, yeah, 

Sabrina: I’m building credit. I mean, if 

Jianggan: the credit is free, why not? When I 

Sabrina: remember to pay my credit card bills, I’m building credit. When I forget that. Have you 

Jianggan: ever paid anything to a credit card company? Like, uh, aside from the money that you borrowed? I mean, like, I don’t know, fines?

Jianggan: Yeah. For what? 

Sabrina: Because I forgot to pay my credit card bill. 

Sabrina: Hello everyone and welcome to episode 99 of the impulsor podcast so on the previous episode We dived a little deeper into shopee express and its logistic arms because c group recently released their q3 results And in this episode, we’re going to dive a little deeper into their financial services arm, right?

Sabrina: So, C Money. 

Jianggan: So, Phyllis, can you pull out that slide? As you can [00:01:00] see that digital financial services is a very profitable part of, C Group. And, uh, if you look at Q3., This year it actually made 187. 9, so almost 200 million, , U.

Jianggan: S. dollars of, , just APDAT, which is basically profit. It’s a business that people sort of vaguely know, but nobody actually talks too much about, and they always think of Shopee as a e commerce platform. But over the last few years, it has built a fairly large, I would say fairly sophisticated digital financial services.

Jianggan: which is powered by lending. And Felix, can you scroll up a little bit? Yeah. So basically if you look at the loan book, do you know what a loan book is? 

Sabrina: It’s a record of how much money they are loaning to the consumers, 

yeah. 

Jianggan: So obviously when companies report the size of their lending operations, I mean, some of them report, okay, this is my loan book.

Jianggan: Some others report, okay, this is my disbursement Like how much loan have I given out? Which one is bigger?

Sabrina: Your loan book. 

Jianggan: Dispersal. 

Sabrina: Why? 

Jianggan: I mean, if you look at digital financing companies, [00:02:00] their loans typically last for two weeks, one month, two months, three months. So during the three months, the same amount of money that you can disperse multiple times and people will pay the payback.

Jianggan: But actually what you mentioned probably makes sense because some of the sort of larger financing companies. They will give out their loan like less than one time a year. So the number might be bigger. 

Sabrina: One thing interesting about C money, like we’re looking at the slide now, right? So they have this thing called on book as well as off book loan.

Sabrina: So what’s actually the differences between both of these loans? 

Jianggan: So basically it’s money that’s from its equity and its debt, right? So for instance, in C group’s point of view, they will have, problems of money that they have on their equity.

Jianggan: So, so they use as a lending capital, but there’s also things like, okay, the deposit they have, in the digital bank, they would have, the corporate loan that they take from lenders that they can use as lending capital. So basically this is the own book, lending. And off book means that, [00:03:00] okay, I provide lending and sometimes I don’t want to provide this monocapital.

Jianggan: Sometimes. Okay. Somebody else wants to be part of it to share the risk. So say I work with a bank in Indonesia. So if I issue a loan of say, a hundred dollars to a consumer Indonesia, so I would provide say 20% of this a hundred dollars. That $20 and $80 would come from a bank, the $80 loan book.

Jianggan: Is on a book of loan of the bank, not on C money itself. So for C money will be off book. 

Sabrina: So that’s what considered off. But C money seems to have a bigger proportion of on book loans, right? So for Q3, on book loans were about 3. 8 billion, US billions, and then off book is 0. 8. So they are mostly financing most of these loans themselves.

Jianggan: Not necessarily, right? You could be the depositors. I mean if you think about, I mean. But it’s on 

Sabrina: their equity. You 

Jianggan: It’s on their book. It’s on their book. It’s a debt on their book. Yeah. It’s liability. If you think about [00:04:00] historically, when a tech company first try to start many operations, people will not believe them, right?

Jianggan: So saying that, hey if I lend money to you, or if you use my money to do lending, how can I be sure that you can take the money back and return the profits to me? So usually they start with the lending from the equity. Equity is very expensive to raise equity. So over the years they go to the loan approach.

Jianggan: So, hey I’m a company, I, I borrow like $50 million to use as lending capital. I guarantee that I’ll pay back this and the company will guarantee that 

whether the 

Jianggan: lenders pay me back doesn’t affect us. 

Sabrina: I still have to pay 

Jianggan: the ultimate lender. But that can be expensive.

Jianggan: So eventually what they probably grew, I mean they didn’t provide a breakdown, but if we manage to find the books of the digital banks they own, we’ll probably find some clues, which is, I, I don’t know, I mean, do you, do, do you use any digital bank? 

Sabrina: No. 

Jianggan: Okay. First, no? Joshua, no?

Jianggan: [00:05:00] Revolute. Revolute. Okay. Is Revolute 

Sabrina: considered a digital bank? Revolute. 

Jianggan: In certain countries, I think they have a banking license in certain countries, right? 

Sabrina: I use Revolut. 

Jianggan: Okay. Will you put money there? Do you put money there? 

Sabrina: Oh, yes, I do. I do. Do 

Jianggan: they pay with interest? 

Sabrina: No. 

Jianggan: Okay, cool. Very good. I don’t, 

Sabrina: I don’t think they do.

Jianggan: And when C Bank first launched in Indonesia, they were paying a deposit of 7 percent interest. I know. 

Sabrina: Damn. If they did that in Singapore, then yeah, I would use it. 

Jianggan: I thought they would do it in Singapore because the case in Indonesia is that if they want to borrow money to use as lending capital, as a company, they’re probably going to pay like 12 percent to 14 percent interest.

Jianggan: And, and if they paid lenders, 7%, which is already much higher compared to like consumers will get in other banks. I think in Mandira, it pays like 1. 5%. So, so of course, it’s very attractive to lenders because they get higher return. And it’s attractive for C group as well because they get all this capital at very [00:06:00] low cost.

Jianggan: Speaking of which, I think 7th Bend is still quite high. I mean, if they use like 4%, they’ll still be very attractive. And 

Sabrina: I think when we’re looking at the financial services results, right, it’s not just the loan book, but also the non performing loans, 

Sabrina: so their non performing loans seems to be about 1.

Sabrina: 2%, which I think is quite low. It has been going down. 

Jianggan: It is quite low. So 

Sabrina: we used to run a digital lending company in Indonesia, right? Yeah, it used to be 

Jianggan: Loan Shark, yes. 

Sabrina: Maybe you can explain to the viewers, how do you grow your loan books while still trying to minimize this risk of non performing loans?

Sabrina: I 

Jianggan: think the issue with the consumer credit is that, I mean, all of you guys have credit card, right? Because you are good customers, you have a stable income and the people know where you live and you probably have some, I don’t know, history, like, you know, your parents own a house or something. So you are the good customers and, and, uh, and you will be covered by [00:07:00] credit.

Jianggan: In the market, there are also people who need credit, but could not get anything from the banks or like, you know, formal financial institutions. So where do they go? No tax. And why do loan sharks charge a higher interest? 

Sabrina: Because those people have no other choice. 

Jianggan: No? 

Sabrina: I was like, who else, who else can they get money from if not the loan sharks?

Jianggan: No, they charge a higher interest because the risk of that is very high, right? Because people who borrow money from 

loan sharks, 

Jianggan: they don’t have good credit history. They have a higher chance of not paying back. And to compensate for the risk, 

Sabrina: They charge a higher interest. They 

Jianggan: charge a higher interest.

Jianggan: And of course, all this, like, collection, whatever tactics are also part of that business. Of course, that business is not legal, I think. 

Sabrina: In Singapore, I think it’s illegal. 

Jianggan: Yeah. 

Sabrina: It’s illegal, right? 

Jianggan: It’s illegal, but it shows some reality of people wanting to get credit and that they don’t have formal means to access credit.

Jianggan: Now you project this to [00:08:00] a more developing country, like Indonesia. I remember for a long time the credit card penetration of Indonesia is about 3%. It’s very low. Like 3 percent of the people have credit cards. So which means the vast majority of people, when they do consumption, when they buy things to access credit, um, either they don’t have any means or they have to find like very expensive credit means.

Jianggan: Um, why is the credit card penetration so low is because I mean, you think of everything regulated, right? People know where you live and, you know, your whole sort of journey. Yes. 

Sabrina: All in one. One stop shop. 

Jianggan: Yeah. And you have your, your credit history. You have your bank account. You have, uh, all this. And you have your education.

Jianggan: We have a 

Sabrina: very large bank population as well. Most of the population has a bank since they were young. 

Jianggan: Yes. And you have the history of dealing with the bank. And so, so that can help sort of banks assess your credit worthiness. Yes. And, uh, you also have the credit bureau report. But in a country like Indonesia, for example, so most people will not have access to this.

Jianggan: And from [00:09:00] banks and lenders point of view. I know that you could potentially be a good, good borrower, but I don’t know 

if, 

Jianggan: I don’t know, what do I do? I raise the interest rate it to, for the potential risk. That is why, I mean, credit card penetration, Indonesia has been low ’cause the banks do not know who these customers are.

Sabrina: But bringing this back to Shopee, so how does Shopee as an e-commerce platform. the risk of its customers. So we’re assuming most of these Shopee customers who are using the loans from Shopee are their consumers, right? So how does Shopee as a platform manage this risk or judge their consumers? 

Jianggan: So do you remember when you were applying for credit card and information do you have to give the bank?

Sabrina: My payslip. Yeah. 

Jianggan: What else?

Sabrina: They will ask, like, your property, who owns this property. 

Jianggan: Uh huh. Uh huh. I think that’s fine. They, they, you need to fill in who your employer is. Oh, yeah, yeah. Which for us is a payslip. Yeah, yeah. Employer. It’s a payslip. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:10:00] And, uh, and they’ll probably assess your creditability.

Jianggan: Yeah. Which, which, uh, which is still very established. Uh, in Indonesia, the problem with banks is that they don’t have access to all this established news for the consumers. Like, I mean, many people working in informal sectors, so they will not have payslip. Many people are rich, but they don’t have payslip.

Jianggan: So unless you, I mean, historically, you see certain credit card, uh, practices is that, okay, in order to get like, say, 5, 000 credit in your credit card, you have to put 5, 000 deposit into the bank 

to serve 

Jianggan: as a contract. So, so for short this case, and obviously. For them to look at, okay, whether you’re a good customer or not, they have some initial data to, to, to play with, like, okay, where do you live?

Jianggan: Well, no, where do you like to live? Because I mean, we, we, Where do you 

Sabrina: send your parcels to? Where do you 

Jianggan: send your parcels to? And, uh, what, what stuff do you buy? 

How 

Jianggan: often do you buy it? I mean, there are lots of data points that they know about you. And if you use sort of, uh, Shopee [00:11:00] Pay and, and, uh, And, and, and basically everything is closed loop, right?

Jianggan: And they know, I mean, how you pay, what kind of payment method you put on top of that, how do you top up. So they will have a lot of data to allow them to form, uh, like initial judgment about, okay, whether you are likely a good customer or likely a bad customer. So based on that profile, they assign you a credit limit.

Jianggan: Maybe you start with a hundred dollars, right? Because I don’t know where But then it 

Sabrina: grows as they 

Jianggan: yeah So if you prove to be a good customer every time you pay back on time, etc, etc, and your credit limit will grow 

And 

Jianggan: if you default and stuff, I mean, maybe you you you will be denied a credit next time so So when they do that repeatedly, I mean Customers were just to be good Get more credit customers were just to be bad get less credit And overall, I mean, you will see the quality of the credit portfolio will grow.

Sabrina: That’s quite interesting, especially if you look at countries that have a large unbanked population, because [00:12:00] there’s not enough, like you said, right, data information. But then these e commerce companies, because the consumers are already using their other services, it’s a good opportunity then for them to just use the data that they have to kind of build up this whole lending system as well, right?

Sabrina: And another interesting thing about C Money is that They also have this Shopee pay later, which is essentially like a buy now pay later, buy now pay later. So, uh, Phyllis, can you go to the tab where we’re looking at? So this is, I’m not sure if this is in the rest of our Southeast Asia that we know of, but at least in Singapore, this is something that is interesting.

Sabrina: So I just tested it out this morning. Okay, you’re buying something for 565. 

Jianggan: No, this is something you 

Sabrina: have to opt into. So it’s not, uh, like. As long as you want to, you can. You have to opt into it, and they will You opt 

Jianggan: into Buy Now Pay Later? 

Sabrina: Yeah, to use Shopee Pay Later. 

Jianggan: So if you think about that, essentially it’s the same as applying for a credit card.

Jianggan: Yeah, 

Sabrina: they need to approve you based on their credit. 

Jianggan: So how much time do you take for them to approve? 

Sabrina: [00:13:00] Uh, I haven’t checked. I tried this morning. 

Jianggan: Okay. But, 

Sabrina: I’ll check it later. It should be pretty fast. It should be quite fast. Banks 

Jianggan: usually take days. 

Sabrina: Yeah, they didn’t ask a lot of questions. But, in Singapore, what we see in terms of the Shopee pay later is that they have 

Jianggan: Oh, they gave you like 1, 500 credit, which means that you were approved.

Sabrina: Oh, no, this is a sample. Okay. It’s not my screenshot because I wasn’t approved. I haven’t been approved. So they allow you to pay installments in one month, three months, six months and 12 months, but what’s interesting, I’ve realized is that for one month and three months, they don’t charge you an interest, but for six and 12 months, they charge you a higher interest.

Sabrina: So the example I’m looking at now is like 3. 75 a month. Which, let’s say 6 months, that’s about 24, a little less than 24 extra, just to use the Shopee pay data. So why do you think they have a fee only for like the 6 and 12 [00:14:00] months, but not 1 or 3? 

Jianggan: Because the risk for them is higher, and also the cost for them is higher as well, right?

Jianggan: Because essentially, they provide you credit, and you could pay everything back within 3 installments, within 3 months. And your effective duration or length of this loan would be one half month because you pay back something at the very beginning. 

But 

Jianggan: if it’s 12 months, and of course this becomes six months.

Jianggan: So essentially they’ll lend you the money for six months. So the cost for them is higher and the risk for them is probably higher as well. 

Sabrina: So that’s why they probably charge an interest as well. 

Jianggan: Yes. Banks don’t charge. I mean, banks don’t charge you for credit card, right? Installment programs. 

Sabrina: No. 

Jianggan: 0 percent installments.

Jianggan: Yeah. 

Sabrina: Most of them are 0%. Even the Apple store doesn’t charge you.

Jianggan: You know how the installment with the bank works, right? So, so the banks Would sort of enable this credit installment program with a particular merchant. And when the consumer uses that, the banks pay, pays the whole thing minus the processing fee to the merchant.

Sabrina: That’s similar to how 

Jianggan: And then [00:15:00] consumer will pay the bank back. 

Sabrina: That’s essentially similar to how buy now pay later works as well, 

Jianggan: right? It is. It is. Although with the banks, you usually deal with the very large ticket items. Banks will not finance you for something like 50. If 

Sabrina: you guys are curious, we did do an episode earlier this year, I think it was in March or April, so it’s episode 69, called The Business Model Behind Buy Now Pay Later, where we go pretty in depth into how merchants, or how these buy now pay laters are, companies are actually earning a profit from the transactions that they are managing, and why some people use buy now pay laters.

Jianggan: Was that a video episode? 

Sabrina: No, it’s an audio episode. So you can listen to it on Spotify. 

Sabrina: So earlier we were talking about how C’s loan book is growing. And of course A part of this is probably also because of the introduction of Shopee Pay Later, right?

Jianggan: I think a part of that is Shopee Pay Later expanding to large ticket items, right? I mean, if you look at the screenshot that you’re putting here, you can pay things which [00:16:00] are worth 700 plus dollars with Shopee Pay Later. So I think historically, I think they only deal with very, small ticket items because to view the credit, they need to something with a low risk way and with quick critic cycles, like one month, three months.

Jianggan: But if they offer something for 12 months, which means that, I mean, cost aside, they probably have Higher confidence about I mean your credit worthiness that I’m willing to offer you 

Sabrina: this And this is probably good for shopee as an e commerce platform in general So for example, if people are making higher ticket purchases on your platform essentially your gmv also increases right 

Jianggan: and 

Sabrina: then of course that helps you the merchants as well because If i’m a brand or if I have an expensive product, I know that you offer this service to your consumers It’s easier for me to list on your platform as well Knowing that it probably reduces that Barrier for consumers to want to buy my product.

Jianggan: Think I mean the whole thing about offering credit is that it’s to increase conversion, right? So people go to a store. They look [00:17:00] at this thing. They like it They think about okay. Can I afford it or do I want to spend that money 

money? 

Jianggan: and If you spread that money over like 6 months 12 months.

Jianggan: Of course, the barrier is much lower people much more like to buy Unless it’s you 

Sabrina: Yes, because I, I do the calculation by myself when I buy something. Like if I use it for a year, then this is how much it costs a month, but I have to make the payment upfront. 

Jianggan: So we discussed with the Phyllis before this, uh, before this podcast and she actually agreed as well.

Jianggan: So, so basically she would take the credit and pay it back immediately and only keep the points and miles. 

Sabrina: If you make the purchase, it’s like. For example, let’s say I want to buy something that costs a thousand dollars. Yes. But I know it’s something I’ll use over a year. Yeah. 

Jianggan: I 

Sabrina: will pay the thousand dollars upfront.

Jianggan: Yeah. 

Sabrina: But to me, the cost of buying the item is a thousand dollars divided by 12 months. It’s essentially the same as installment. It’s girl math. We don’t [00:18:00] need to explain that. Yeah, that’s the reason 

Jianggan: why. Joshua, who is also behind camera, who is, by the way, from Germany, struggled for a long time to understand logic.

Jianggan: And he still doesn’t understand, right? 

Sabrina: You don’t need to understand. There’s no logic. The logic is there. There’s no logic. It’s just, it’s just like this. So I think moving on from C Group, another company who also recently released their financial earnings this week was actually Grab. And Grab also has a lending service.

Sabrina: So can you go to their financial report? So their loan portfolio is about 10 percent of Shopee’s? 

Jianggan: 498 out of, uh, compared to 4. 6, yeah, billion. That’s like, that’s about like 10, 12, 13%? Yeah. About that. So it’s much smaller compared to Shopee. Yes. 

Sabrina: And in the commentary that we wrote, so we have a commentary.

Sabrina: It’ll be linked down in the show notes below about See’s and Grab’s Q3 results. You said that there’s a lot of potential for Grab to tap in here, into here. So what do you mean by potential for Grab? 

Jianggan: I think in the region there are not [00:19:00] that many players which have a huge user base that they can sort of tap into to offer digital financial services and credit services.

Jianggan: And if you look at Grab’s loan portfolio, it’s obviously much smaller compared to Shopee. I think there are some historical reasons to that. If you look at the users of Grab, I think overall they’re more premium compared to users of Shopee. I mean, Shopee offers lots of that necessity at a very cheap cost.

Jianggan: I mean, for people who use taxis every day on a regular basis, they are of a certain sort of income class, at least. 

Sabrina: Could it also be because generally the transaction value on Grab would not be as high as that of Shopee? Because if I’m buying something, like if I buy a big ticket item, obviously the GMV will be a lot higher.

Sabrina: But, and if I were to take like shoppy pay later, the amount would be much bigger than if I were to take like a cab ride. 

Jianggan: In certain countries probably that’s the case because we’re in Indonesia, for instance, in Indonesia, I mean, a grab ride will probably cost you like two or three dollars.

Yeah. 

Jianggan: US. And, uh, average shopping parcel will cost you at least [00:20:00] six to seven dollars. So that’s like three times the difference. In Singapore, I would argue it’s probably not the case because, Um, how much does it take? Like $10, but if 

Sabrina: no one would be taking a are parcels, 

Jianggan: which are like $10, 

Sabrina: but you wouldn’t be taking a loan to take a grab.

Sabrina: Right? Right. It wouldn’t make sense, like, I wouldn’t split up my grab Right. Payment over three months. 

Jianggan: Mm-Hmm. . Mm-Hmm. 

Sabrina: It wouldn’t make sense as a, 

Jianggan: it’s, uh, yeah. It’s a bit difficult to, to reconcile. Right? Yeah. It’s um, because you usually don’t have that much metal barrier to actually biting on glass.

Sabrina: So most of, I would think most of Grab’s loan books in terms of their, like, maybe lending services or anything would be maybe physical stores instead? 

Jianggan: No, most of the loan products are actually targeting towards the other side of the equation, which is other riders, drivers, and merchants, which I think makes sense because these are the people who actually make money from Grab, and Grab know that they are the best, right?

Jianggan: I mean, you probably take like, I don’t know, one, two rides a day. Many of these people, they take, I don’t know, 20? Transactions with [00:21:00] grab on a daily basis because they’re providing a service and grab will take a lot of cases, take their money first and disperse to them. So when that is the case, you would have more leverage over these people.

Jianggan: And of course, I think I can grab also announced very, very low sort of MPO ratio, kind of number is the exact number, but it’s also very low. So it’s because they have leverage over these people. They can make money out of grab. Um, I remember like many years ago when I was talking to people from Ant who were providing sort of merchant lending on Taobao and Timo, they said, the MPO is very low, not because we’re doing a fantastic job, it’s because many of the sellers, they are very low.

Jianggan: 70 to 80 percent of their income. So, so, so even if they want to default on loans, they will default on loans or somebody else. Not for us. So 

Sabrina: I guess that would kind of be the difference between Grab’s and Shopee’s financial services, right? So Shopee’s is more towards the consumer side, whereas Grab focuses more on the riders and drivers.

Sabrina: But do you think Grab [00:22:00] has the opportunity to leverage more on its consumers? So you said that there’s potential for Grab, right? Is this potential for growth on the rider’s merchant side or on the consumer side? 

Jianggan: I think on the consumer side there is room for, for growth because, uh, I think Grab’s current, like, monthly transacting user volume is 40 

Sabrina: 41 million.

Sabrina: 41 

Jianggan: something million? Yeah, 

Sabrina: 41 million. I would 

Jianggan: presume the majority of them are consumers. And amongst its consumers and that there’s a certain percentage who would probably need financial piloted services. And there’s a smaller percentage who would need, uh, sort of lending services to cover their needs.

Jianggan: I mean, education, healthcare, whatever. So I think these people do exist and they are only on a platform. The question is that, I mean, how do you identify them and how do you collect enough data from them for you to form initial credit assessment and how do you evolve your credit assessment? Um, because.

Jianggan: For any learning service to, I mean, you, you get out to the people you don’t know, unless you have super strong collection. Like the loan sharks? [00:23:00] Yeah, I mean, I don’t think the loan sharks are that good, right? If they’re that effective, they will not use the tactics of like, you know, sending pig’s head to people.

Sabrina: True, but that’s their 

Jianggan: tactics. Yes, that shows that their usual tactics don’t work. So they have to resort into this kind of intimidation. But anyway so for GrabSkates, I do think that if they start a large lending operation, cash loan operation to the consumers, they will probably have a high initial NPO rate.

Sabrina: But my question would be what. In what services that they provide as a platform, should they be providing this lending services to the consumers? 

Jianggan: I think at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. So, if it’s on platform, you will start with something better because you have better data, more leverage.

Jianggan: But still, you will not know how good the consumer quality is. And if you start with something off platform, you run at a higher risk. . So the question is that what’s your starting point? If your starting point is, I don’t know, 20%, MPL, 30%, MPL, and how do you quickly bring that down to 1% through sort of [00:24:00] iterating your credit model through better data collection or whatever.

Jianggan: So, so how much time do you give yourself? So yeah. So I do think that they’re making progress from their loans to merchants and drivers, and then consumers would be something, I mean, they have some banal patterns of institutionality, but, but it’s still at a sort of risk free side, right?

Jianggan: Less risky side. 

Sabrina: It’s not as, also I think it’s not as apparent as Shopee, but also then could be because generally, I mean, they have different business models as a platform, right?

Jianggan: I do think that there’s potential but knowing Grab as an organization, they have been, they’ve been quite rational in terms of their execution, especially since the pandemic.

Jianggan: So they don’t rush into too many things. There are things which they think they should do, but not now. So that shows, in a way, some kind of strategic restraint. In another way, it also shows that it has a pretty secure position in, in terms of red hailing at least and towards the extent for delivery in Southeast Asia.

Jianggan: Nobody can challenge them big time. Look at shopping over the past few years. You 

Sabrina: had 

Jianggan: [00:25:00] challenges from like TikTok shop. It’s also 

Sabrina: because of the nature of their business. Grab itself is such an operationally heavy business, right? For a competitor to come in 

Jianggan: and do at that scale 

Sabrina: and volume, it’s very difficult as well.

Sabrina: So 

Jianggan: maybe someone should buy some kind of, 

Sabrina: So thank you guys for tuning in to another episode of the Impulsof podcast. We hope that you guys enjoyed this week’s episode and if you did do like and subscribe to our videos as well as share with your friends if you think they would find it useful as well.

Sabrina: Thank you and bye bye