In a bid to ensure digital inclusion for all, Grab partners with Warung Pintar, connected by ASEAN Impact Challenge

Grab announced yesterday that it has partnered with Indonesia-based Warung Pintar, a micro retail technology startup company. The partnership was made possible by ASEAN Impact Challenge (AIC), and it seeks to empower grassroots community in Indonesia to migrate to the digital economy.

Grab and Warung Pintar formalised their partnership with an MoU signing session.

ASEAN Impact Challenge (AIC) is a regional platform specified to discover innovators and entrepreneurs from Southeast Asia. It follows the mission of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

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With Grab, AIC created the inaugural GrabImpact Award in 2018 that supports Southeast Asia’s innovators to help them scale technologies that will solve the challenge of mobility, O2O and payments in the region. It was Warung Pintar that won the award in November last year, beating around 500 other participants.

“Tech innovators have the biggest potential to create social impact at scale. AIC is looking to play a pivotal role in bringing together technology companies such as Grab, with innovators such as Warung Pintar to catalyse partnerships that can bring about greater social impact in the region,” said Era Natasha, Programme Lead of AIC.

Since winning the award and US$10,000 worth of Grab services for a year, Warung Pintar has been brought into the Grab Ventures Velocity accelerator. This is one of the developments of Grab Ventures’ dedicated US$250 million fund for Indonesian tech startups looking to scale business across the region.

Grab Ventures Velocity is a scale-up programme, bringing both public and private sector partner to provide startup partners with regional market access, mentorship, a proof of concept leveraging Grab Platform and where suitable, strategic investments.

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“Our goal is to empower 100 million microentrepreneurs in the region by 2020. We look forward to working hand-in-hand with Warung Pintar to uplift those in need, helping them to develop new skill sets and improving their livelihoods,” said Chris Yeo, Head of Grab Ventures.

Warung Pintar recently raised a US$27.5 million financing round.
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Image Credit: AIC

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