Grab Holdings Singapore, which has business spanning from ride-hailing, to food delivery and now financial services hire thousands of employees across the region including here in Malaysia. With questions raised on these once cut-above startups with their promising business model, ‘sustainable’ is now the buzzword as many are seeing funds dry up and are resorting to cost-cutting measures.
In an interview with Reuters, Grab Holdings Chief Operating Officer Alex Hungate said the company has no plans for mass layoffs as some rivals had done and are selectively hiring while reining in its financial service plans.
He added that earlier in the year, Grab had been worried about the global recession and was very careful and judicious about any hiring and as a result had not gotten into a desperate position of freezing hiring or mass layoffs.
“Around mid-year, we did some kind of specific reorganisations, but I know other companies have been doing mass layoffs, so we don’t see ourselves in that category,” Hungate, 56 who joined Grab Holdings Ltd in January.
“You want to make sure that we’re conserving capital. The hurdle for making a hire has definitely been raised,” he said.
Rivals, SEA-owned Shopee which overstretched its ambition by expanding beyond Southeast Asia and into Europe and Latin America has been reporting massive losses quarter on quarter, leaving the company to take cost-cutting measures including mass layoffs and shutting of offices.
Grab reported a narrower second-quarter loss of US$572 million compared to the US$801 million it registered a year earlier, the regional ride-hailing giant listed on the Nasdaq in December saw its share tumble 60% giving its market value now at US$10 billion.
