(Reuters) – Grab, Southeast Asia’s largest ride-hailing company and food delivery service, listed on Nasdaq Thursday after its merger of $40 billion with Altimeter Growth Corp.

This deal, which is also the largest ever made by a blank check company in the world, was the first U.S.-listed by a Southeast Asian firm.

GRAB: WHAT IS IT?

Grab was established in 2012 as the largest startup in Southeast Asia. Its value is just above $16 billion. The company was originally a taxi-hailing system in Malaysia. It now refers to itself as “superapp” and has expanded into other areas such as food delivery, shopping, parcel delivery, and digital lending.

Singapore-headquartered Grab operates across 465 cities in eight countries in the region, counting Indonesia as its biggest. Last year, a license was granted to Singapore Telecommunications Ltd for its digital banking venture.

Grab was in the spotlight when it purchased the Southeast Asian operations of Uber Technologies (NYSE 🙂 Inc. This transaction saw the U.S. rider-hailing firm take a share in Grab.

Grab employs around 8,000 people and has technology centres in Singapore, Beijing Seattle Bengaluru, Seattle, Seattle and Seattle.

WHO IS BACKING GRAB: Early investors are Japan’s SoftBank and China’s Didi Chuxing, as well as venture capital firms Vertex Ventures Holdings (NASDAQ:) Ventures Capital and GGV Capital.

About $12 billion was raised by Grab before the company’s listing. The investors range from hedge and venture funds to auto companies and other ride-hailing businesses.

Uber, Booking Holdings (NASDAQ:) Inc, China Investment Corp, Coatue Management, Hillhouse Capital, Hyundai Motor Co, Invesco Ltd, Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:), Ping An Capital Co. Toyota Motor (NYSE.) Corp., Yamaha Motor Co.

Three dozen investors joined the SPAC deal. They included Temasek Holdings and BlackRock (NYSE :), Fidelity international, Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala, and Permodalan Nasional Bhd in Malaysia.

Grab’s largest competitor is GoTo Group. It was formed from the merger between Gojek, an Indonesian ride-hailing company and Tokopedia, a local e-commerce leader.

Sea Ltd, a Singapore-based company, has established ecommerce, gaming, and digital payments businesses. They are also looking into Indonesian food delivery and financial services. Sea also received a Singapore digital bank license.

Grab will likely be more competitive with banks in its expansion of financial services.

It competes also with delivery companies such as Foodpanda PLC and Deliveroo PLC.

What are GRAB’S Financials?

Grab’s third quarter revenue decreased by 9% to $157million from the previous year. Adjusted loss before interest tax, depreciation or amortization (EBITDA), a measure of the company’s net income, grew 66% to $212 millions. The quarterly record for gross merchandise value was $4 billion.

As more people switched to online food delivery in the wake of the pandemic, the delivery industry has become the largest segment.

Grab predicts that it will be profitable in EBITDA terms by 2023.

Who are its key executives?

Anthony Tan (39), is the CEO of the company and co-founder.

Tan Hooi Ling is Tan Hooi Ling’s co-founder.

Unrelated in their relationship, Tans met at Harvard Business School where they came up with the idea for ride-hailing.

Ming Maa is Grab’s president. He joined SoftBank in 2016 and has been a key dealmaker for the company.