Grab is considered a successful, attractive company

$Grab Holdings (GRAB.US)$ Its quarterly losses, particularly during a turbulent pandemic time, when various branches of the business are going up and down in tandem with national restrictions, are not a worry.

Nor was its 20 per cent tumble on the launch day of the IPO. As Grab co-founder Anthony Tan presciently quipped after the bell rang: “The stock will go up and it will go down” — as he saw his personal wealth enter and depart billionaire territory within a few hours.

But that wasn’t the point of the IPO. The point was to raise another US$4.5 billion to continue fuelling Grab’s growth in the next few years, in the hopes of more financial stability after 2023.

$Sea (SE.US)$ , for example, traded below its IPO price for a year after its debut in 2017 at just US$15. This year, they peaked at over US$350, despite the fact that its Shopee platform keeps bleeding money.

Even after sliding to US$260, analysts retain forecast of close to US$400 — 26 times of what the company was worth four years ago.

The company started as a taxi hailing app, creeping up to become an Uber competitor, later moving into food delivery only to see this business explode and dwarf the mobility branch amidst the pandemic lockdowns.

The birth of GrabMart and grocery deliveries — with GrabFinance wrapped around all of these — offers another layer of digital finance services, allowing Grab to become a superapp people will use for far more than just moving from point A to B.

Just like how $Amazon (AMZN.US)$ started with selling books, before it became the world’s largest e-commerce retailer, cloud service provider and, recently, a full-on entertainment outfit making multibillion dollar shows (like the latest take on the Tolkien’s saga), companies like Grab are seen for the opportunities access to millions of willing buyers gives them, not their current operations.