Southeast Asia’s dominant unicorns, notably ride sharing and food delivery companies Grab and Gojek, are vying to become the super-app choice for the Asean region. Following Grab’s acquisition of Uber’s Southeast Asia operations in 2018, at the time it appeared the two were headed towards a winner takes all’ battle that has become synonymous with fast growing tech companies.
Entering 2019, this narrative remained unchanged, as capital faced minimal resistance flowing into rapidly growing business disruptors amid a low interest rate environment and sluggish global growth backdrop. Tech companies globally were looking to build monopoly-like dominance across a variety of sectors, equating current market share positioning to future income...