Anthony Tan: A Man with a Mission to Drive Southeast Asia Forward

Everyone says “follow your dreams” but not many of us go after the pie-in-the-sky dreams that we envisioned as kids. Life interjects, one or two hiccups come our way and we end up doing jobs just to make it through the day. Translating that childhood vision into reality is not everyone’s cup of tea. However, there are people who hang on to their goal and pedal their way to success with courage and dedication. Among such gutsy personalities is Anthony Tan, the CEO, and co-founder of Southeast Asia’s dominant ride-hailing app, Grab.

Anthony knew that he wants to be a businessman from the age of six. Unlike others he didn’t let his dream be clouded by the hustle-bustle of life. Instead, his passion for starting something of his own grew even stronger with time.  He was just 11 when he started showing the signs of a businessman.  His first venture was trading a good number of comic books that his parents bought for him from a Comics Convention in Singapore.

Anthony knew that he wants to be a businessman from the age of six. Unlike others he didn’t let his dream be clouded by the hustle-bustle of life. Instead, his passion for starting something of his own grew even stronger with time.  He was just 11 when he started showing the signs of a businessman.  His first venture was trading a good number of comic books that his parents bought for him from a Comics Convention in Singapore.

 “Like every little kid, I was addicted to comics, loved X-Men. I saw other kids wanting what I had. So we said, ‘Hey! Let’s trade.’ Soon after we started trading, I realized that they didn’t have much to trade with. So, I accepted cash, and I made some decent money, I must add,” says Anthony.

The 36-year-old entrepreneur belongs to a wealthy Malaysian family but family wealth isn’t the secret to this billionaire’s unparalleled success. With such a rich legacy of Tan Chong Motors in Malaysia, Anthony could have simply joined the family-owned business but the scion heir decided to chart his own path. The struggle stories of his grandfather who had a humble beginning and became the tycoon of the auto industry in Malaysia– egged Anthony to start something of his own that can make a social impact.

The Origin of a Big Idea from a Simple Question

While attending a lecture during his graduation at Harvard Business School, Anthony always heard his friend complaining — “What’s wrong with the taxi system in your country?” Your great-grandfather’s a taxi driver and your grandfather started the Japanese car industry in Malaysia, so you should do something about it.” And this struck an idea in Tan’s head to make an application-based taxi reservation service, Grabtaxi. He wanted to build an app that will help people to book taxis and ease their traveling woes and help drivers to scale up their income from assured passengers.

However, when he pitched this idea to one of his professors, all he got to hear were words of discouragement— “Anthony! Life is tough enough. You just have to focus on one bottom line… the idea is too hard, isn’t proven yet in the real world. It’s nice on paper. In cases, this is nice to hear but too difficult to implement.”  But Anthony had that “never give up” attitude in his DNA and he started working on his idea.

The Stumbling Hurdles along the Way

Being the son of an entrepreneur, Anthony’s upbringing helped him to shape his innovative and solution-driven mindset. But his road to success wasn’t a bed of roses. Educating the drivers to use technology is one of his biggest challenges that Anthony had to face at the beginning of his Grabtaxi venture. Traveling in the sun in cramped taxis, helping the uneducated drivers to understand the technology and battling with their reluctance to adopt it, there was a lot to tackle. The drivers were poor to own a smartphone and they were also clueless about the internet or GPS. Thus, he had to finance the phone for them and teach them how to switch it on. Besides, there were other entrepreneurial hiccups such as legacy issues, licenses, permits, and government approvals.  Even convincing the taxi-fleet owners was also a tough nut to crack for Anthony.

Once when he was at Marina to sign up a taxi-fleet owner to his ride-booking app, he heard a loud thud midway through the negotiations. As he peered under their table, he saw a machine gun on the floor and it was only later when he realized that he was talking to one of the area’s biggest arms dealers. Despite such challenges, Anthony finally launched his taxi reservation service called MyTeksi.  Later, the name changed to GrabTaxi in 2012 and now it’s known as Grab.

The Beginning of Grab: A Platform for New Possibilities

Anthony started Grab with a group of incredibly ambitious and incredibly optimistic friends in a tiny rented storage space in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 2012. Though initially, it began with a dream to ease the traveling woes of people, soon it started taking on the largest issues such as income disparity, outdated infrastructure, and access inequality. Anthony realized that Southeast Asia is brimming with ambition but also has limitations. Millions of people face challenges every day while commuting, ordering food, making transaction and the list goes on. Hence, they created Grab to address it all.  Now, thattiny company has transformed into largest mobile technology corporation in Southeast Asia that addresses the everyday needs of millions of consumers, drivers, merchants, and businesses and helps millions of people to thrive. In addition to transport, grab now offers food delivery, digital payment, movie ticket and hotel booking services all across Southeast Asia. 

“Just like every single Southeast Asian, we’re still incredibly ambitious. We’re still questioning those everyday limitations. And we’re still incredibly optimistic,” asserts Anthony. 

A Future of Persistent Growth

Anthony hopes to see Grab continue its surge in growth. He aims to make grab Southeast Asia’s first everyday SuperApp and to benefit a variety of workers. 

While sharing his vision Anthony asserts, “A lot of our driver-partners, our merchant partners come from different economic reality than us. Our goal is to take those 7 million workers to go to 20 million, 20 million to 50 million, 50 million to 100 million micro-entrepreneurs and micro SMBs.”

 “I really do have a plan for the future. When I could talk at six, I knew I was going to do business and I consistently even at this stage of life know that I’d still be a businessman. But what matters is what type of businessman? I know for a fact that when I lay six feet under, people should say that this guy made a difference in the world. There will be enough distractions, so the challenge is to keep your focus and my pursuit is to prove the detractors wrong.” he ends on a philosophical note.