Episode 35 - Creating from a Place of Helping People with Anthony Tan
Anthony Tan’s entrepreneurial journey started with a simple question: how can I best take care of other people?
Through that he founded Grab, the leading superapp in Southeast Asia. Grab provides food delivery, ridesharing, and digital payments for its users. It’s also valued at $14 billion.
Anthony sat down with our global podcast hosts in the midst of the 2020 pandemic to share how his graduate school business plan led to a multi-billion dollar organization.
We’re excited to share it with you.
Episode Transcript
Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.
Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. We're so glad you joined us. We have a special guest. If you've listened as before, you've heard me say that before. We've got a really, really special guest today, a great friend of ours who we've known now for six or seven years and has faithful leadership in this space of Faith Driven Entrepreneurship, who is joining us from Singapore. But I want to actually ask you a question that just came to mind as we're just getting ready Anthony I think that you probably have the best voice in Christendom. Have you ever considered a career in radio?
Anthony Tan: Yeah. Well, if grab doesn't work out, you know, I could be a radio DJ. That could be. You could. That could be an option.
Henry Kaestner: You have an incredible baritone voice. I mean, I'm just going to just listen to whatever you do going forward. As it turns out, you do have a full time gig that probably is going to take you away from doing that anytime soon. You are running a really phenomenal company that God has blessed. You're making an incredible impact on culture and just an incredible size and scale. And we want to talk about that, of course. But before we do that, we'd like to get an understanding about our guests and where they come from. What I want to start off with you. And since we get a chance to see your daughter, beautiful daughter is we're just getting started here. Tell us about your family's situation and your family of origin before you talk about calling the kids. Tell us about your journey growing up. Take us from the beginning, please.
Anthony Tan: Wow. There's a lot to share, but I'll start with the most important part of my life. My wife and kids. I've been very blessed. Have a very Christ centered wife who I mean, she's probably the most like my head of people said this to me. She said, and there are very few wives or husbands in the world who let your husband work. So nearly every lunch and dinner over the past, I guess two weeks have just been spent with either business meetings or grabbers just to keep popping up the social capital because, you know, everybody's working from home now. And clearly, you know, I couldn't have gotten here. Oh, we couldn't be here without her. Her name's Chloe. Chloe, and she's just been an incredible partner in my life. And then one of her philosophies that she's taught me is that we come from a traditional and Chinese family. She comes from a big family business, and I came from a family business before. And our traditional Chinese parents were historically saying, hey, you know, you got to love your children so much. And sometimes even forget investing in the marriage. And my wife has taught me that we show to our kids the love for each other so much that they are looking up and modeling that love right in the same way that we learned love from Jesus and how he loves the church and how he loves us. So I've as you can tell, I've learned a lot from her and clearly she's the neck that turns the head. Right? She makes me believe I'm the head in the house, but actually she's just turning my head.
Henry Kaestner: I like that. That's a great illustration. And she's got the gift of hospitality, too. I can vouch for that. I remember her taking us out and just ordering just an incredible stream of food, and it makes me want to come back. So please tell her that we say hi. Tell us about your family. Growing up, where did you grow up? What were some of the lessons you learned up and how does that influence your faith in your work today?
Anthony Tan: Well, you know, my mother fortunately comes from a Christ centered background. So we had her and my aunties. So even as a child, I remember, you know, at a very young age, I remember when I couldn't speak until about five, six years old. So, you know, my parents thought I was disabled in many ways. So, you know, they would bring a bell and they'll go. They took me to a doctor and they brought a bell and they put it on the right ear. And I look left. And he went to me on the left and I looked right and the doctor was like, this kid is dumb right? So oh.
Henry Kaestner: Little did you know.
Anthony Tan: So you know, my mom never gave up on me. And my aunties never gave up. They kept praying for me. And even when I couldn't speak, you know, everything they prayed. I would rush in the group prayer, you know, shoved my little head in there, in the group prayer and just kneel and pray with them, even though I couldn't say a thing. So that was my background. My father, on the other hand, was extremely strong Buddhist. He built temples, literally funds temples we built in Taiwan. So, you know, it was living and growing up in this huge dichotomy that was taking place between, you know, and my father would push us to and again, he pushed us because he felt that, one, it was the right thing to do, you know, to sort of pay respects to. We come from a very Confucius, very if you imagine Taoist Chinese family where you had to pay respects to those that have passed. My great grandparents, my grandparents, you know, carried [...] sticks. And I always felt very uncomfortable about that. And my mother would always say, look, you honor your father but at the same time, you know, after this, you just pray for forgiveness. And, you know, and I always had these arguments with my father about religion, as you can imagine, so much so that, you know, by my teenage years, it just it kept chipping away. And, you know, I slowly fell away from the church. And, you know, in my university days, I was essentially an atheist. I became an atheist. You know, I studied Nietzsche. I studied Hegel. Not good things to study. I don't recommend it at all. And, you know, messed with me, and I fell away.
Henry Kaestner: Hmm. And so what brought you back?
Anthony Tan: Wow you know. I was so blessed that when I went to HBS I actually, I would say even pre HBS there was some calling. And I felt there was some pastors, some my youth pastors never gave up on me. You know, they came I remember a great momentous event where he called me for coffee at Starbucks, and then he just wanted to just hear from me. I came back from university. He was sad that, you know, that I fallen off from my path with Jesus. And you just want to talk to me. You want to hear me? He wasn't judgmental. He just tried to help me. But I still was very restrictive. Suddenly events happened in my family, you know, very dramatic events. And that helped me. And I saw those bad things that happened to my family members. And they kept with the faith and also encouraging to me because I could see, wow, even when you're hitting bottom low, you are still clinging on to his word, even more so. So that was so encouraging. But even then, I still wasn't really convinced. Then I went to HBS. And at Christian Fellowship, you know, first two weeks of Harvard Business School, there's these events where you go and check out social clubs and all that. And, you know, people say you go to HBs, you obviously get an MBA, some say you get a MRS, which is a wife. Mrs. Right. But, you know, in my case, I really found a great fellowship group that I have till today. So I had two brothers and Henry, I think we talked about this before, one in Hong Kong, one in San Francisco. And it was so similar to me. And, you know, one was also a party animal. And I could reflect his weakness. It was a bit of putting a mirror, but because he never judged me, he was going through the same problems I was going through. Fighting temptation, fighting pleasure, right. Fighting short term gratification and not thinking about eternity. That really helped me reflect and grow. And then I had these two brothers. We call each other accountability partners until today. And then I had my now my board director, Andy Mills. Henry, I think you know him as well, who had been just, to me that he was he was just at our board meeting yesterday. And he actually, you know, right from if I remember was, you know, month one. HBS, we just connected. And he's always said, Anthony, you know, I'm here to mentor you. And he's been mentoring me since since 09 until now, 2020.
Henry Kaestner: What a great guy to have in your life. I've gotten to know Andy well, and he's got a new ministry that you might know about faith in financial services, where he's ministering to so many people in the financial sector, in Boston, in New York and Super Guy. That's a great story. And I love the way that you've honored him and his faithfulness to you and your faithfulness to him.
Anthony Tan: You know, God places very special people along this journey and you got to embrace it and hold on to it. Helps you and helps you both grow.
Henry Kaestner: Very, very cool. Okay. So I want to have you take us a little bit through the journey that led you to start grab. As I do that, I also wanted to set some perspective about how grab is for those listening in the U.S., most people in the U.S. will likely not have heard of Grab, although it could have mal will. And part of that is because increasingly the press has covered you. And one of the things I love, by the way, when the press covers you, I think back to a TechCrunch article where it talked about why you did what you did or to what you credited your success. And they printed it and they said, you know, Anthony credits his belief in God and his faith in God is being the root for his success. And I love that you gave that witness in testimony. And actually, candidly, I love that they printed it. It just doesn't happen very often and knowing I haven't talked to the press before and you try to bring in about 10% of the time it actually gets through. And and this time it did and it made a really big impression on the US audience. But for those of you who did not see that article, another article I saw, I think it is 198 million downloads of the app, maybe, maybe more, maybe by now, 9 million drivers and 351 cities. In eight countries, $14 billion valuation. Big part of SoftBank portfolio. Uber sold their business in Southeast Asia. To you guys, it's a big deal. But take us back to the origin story. How did it all start? Where did the idea come from, etc.?
Anthony Tan: Sure. We started at HBS as well. As you can tell, a lot of good things happen from the school. In fact, next week I have a call Dean [...] as a good friend and we catch up every month. Again, he's just been a great sense of guidance as well. You know, the school is set up such that it allows you to explore things that you've never been able to explore. And I remember one of the first cases it started with, I'll never forget it. The case was locked us and it said, You can create a business that both helps society and can be economically profitable as well. And this concept of double bottom line, or this concept where historically I thought things were very mutually exclusive. And, you know, I was taught by my father that you just try to make as much money as you can and your fifties and sixties you give back. But, you know, they don't mix that well together. But this case sort of opened up my mind. And then after I started taking classes with Professor Cash and called business at a base of the pyramid, I started taking classes and launching social enterprises, and that helped me foster this belief. And then I found a great, great co-founder, Ee Ling, who's been with me for eight and a half years. And she and I, when we started it and of course, Andy, Andy was there since the beginning, going into business plan competition, Andy even going through our PowerPoint slide deck right from the onset.
Henry Kaestner: I'd love to see that original PowerPoint slide deck. I love I think everybody would like to see a PowerPoint slide deck that led to the type of success that you've had. But yeah, so take us through that. So you're in a business. Make it by way. Can I assume that you won the business plan competition?
Anthony Tan: No, no. We got.
Henry Kaestner: Sam Bowie drafted ahead of you. That's a michael Jordan joke. Sam Bowie was drafted ahead of Michael Jordan. But yeah, I'm sorry I interrupted your story, and it's a good one to keep going.
Anthony Tan: We came up with a business plan. We got a you know what? Our professors still laughed about it. Actually, Dean told me recently about it. I got to see it in this paper. And Dean says, you know, if she instead invested in it, she could have done quite well here.
Henry Kaestner: Not kidding.
Anthony Tan: And then fast forward at the business plan competition. What happened was and again, all the feedback both from the professor was good that, hey, the first plan was building this fleet together and she really didn't like it because it was not asset light enough. And she's right. So I give her that. And then we evolved it and we took that feedback. We evolved it for the business plan competition. I mean, said it's a full virtual fleet and then we didn't get first. We got second we got runners up because they said, Hey, the Malaysia market's too small. Is it because we wanted to solve the problem for safety for women? And that was the key problem Ee Ling. And I said, we don't know if it would do it economically very well. But we said we found a business model that could work. But most importantly, we can solve real safety problems for women Ee Ling, you know, had a lot of problems when she finished McKinsey hours very late at night, she would jump in a taxi. She would feel, so unsafe. And she would pretend that she's on the phone with her parents so that the drivers would feel that, wow, somebody is online, I can't take them and, you know, rob them, rape them. Did this happen all the time? And so that's what we wanted to just solve. That was the immediate problem you want to solve. So then the HBS business plan, judges then said, Hey, Anthony, great idea, but Malaysia market's too small. If it goes for all of Southeast Asia. Could be different. And that's what pushed us right out the. Again, great feedback. You know, I always like those humbling, you know, tight slap in the face and then you wake up.
Henry Kaestner: Yeah, well, you're Malaysia's actually, as it turns out, a pretty big country. It's a pretty big market. But that is you know, that's really stretching things. And obviously that that's worked out for you. That's fascinating. So just to recap, this was born not out of this sense of, oh, my goodness, we're going to create probably the fastest growing company in all of Asia and one of the top fastest growing companies in all the world. This came out of a sense of wanting to solve a problem about women feeling safe in the world and in back of taxis. So tell us about some of the first steps for that as you go ahead and you got out of HBS. Now you've started to commercialize it. Talk to us about some of the early journey.
Anthony Tan: Well, when we came out, I just go back to the HBS story very quickly. Once you came out they gave us some money again, we got runners up, so we had money to buy some AWS, credits to host and, you know, got some guidance on how to create a simple shareholder agreement. So that was very helpful. Then Ling came back with me. We just went straight in and we kicked it off. Ling could only work with me for a short while because she was bonded by McKinsey, so she had to go back to San Francisco. And then I continued and then, you know, to the grace of God, when I went back to California, I think it was for GGVC or one of those events. I think you guys know them as well. I was one of the venture events and I was meeting some other investors and walking. I was in Walgreens and I literally collapsed like I literally just collapsed on the ground. And then my girlfriend, Chloe, and now my wife, she picked me up and she said, you can't go on like this. And I said, No, no, I'm good. I'm good. And I collapsed. Throughout the day, a number of times, I just blackout. So then she then took me to the hospital. Mingma was our president. They just invested in us, SoftBank. And then, you know, six months later or something along those lines. And him and Chloe rushed me to the hospital, through E.R., and they had to do a scan. They thought I got a stroke or heart attack. So then Chloe was crying and then she just spoke to Ee Ling, who I couldn't convince to come back. But, you know, my girlfriend now wife can do miracles with the grace of God. And she spoke to Ee Ling and Ee Ling. After two years of starting, she was back in California. She was then with Salesforce and then she heard Chloe story. She was so worried about me and she said, look, you know, if I don't come back, Anthony is probably go kill himself the way he works. And then she came back. So now she's been with me since.
Henry Kaestner: I want to talk. You've got this love of people that drove the reason for starting grab. You're out there and you are burning the candle at both ends. You're innovating, you're creating, you're taking on money. Did you, at any point in time along the way, kind of start losing sight of this larger social ambition that you had and finding that you're losing yourself and just saying this is just growing too fast and it's gotten away from me and I've lost the sense of purpose. And I know you well enough to know you've brought that back in. I want to talk about the four ages and things, but what was it like for you during this time of scale and did you feel like you're losing your way?
Anthony Tan: Yeah, I mean, there are times Henry, I'll be honest, that, you know, I'm tempted to make the non Christ centered decision. There's been those times for sure, you know, I'm broken in so many ways and flawed. So, you know, that's why I surround myself. So you know, those guys in my team on the call, you know, Dom and Ee Ling are both Christ centered individuals and you know, I surround myself with a lot of Christ centered leaders as sort of accountability partners right they hear me, they hear me talking to you right now. They call it out if it's B.S. And, you know, we have that trust where we can, you know, respectfully call each other out. So I think having these accountability partners, not just in your non-work life, right. And in my fellowship, but also having it surrounding me and my board, you know, I have Andy Mills, I have my fellowship brother OJ. I have, you know, other people who are Christ said that individuals will consistently praying for me at the board right before board meeting. We have a prayer. You know, we have Dom here, you know, holds these weekly prayer sessions across the company. So we have Ee Ling, you know, one's kicked off Alpha. So we have all these things going on in our workplace group. We have a great Christian fellowship group. And again, you know, I remember Peter, who's now CFO. Peter Oey is also very strong view. He is a deacon in his church and he said, man, you know, you guys talk and walk Christ and his values he's quite new he's been less than six months and he said, you know Anthony in the states it would be so non-kosher to speak the way you guys do about Christ and the values. And you guys are so in your face sometimes and we try not to be you know, we try to be as inclusive as we can. And Chin Yin our head of people and are very Christ centered individual. You know, there's a big push about, hey, we should do things that are, you know, in the Valley, I'm sure you've seen this where there's a big movement about the Rainbow Day and all of that. And so obviously, you know, I said, hey, Chin Yin you know, I feel torn. What should I do? And again, because she's just such a great, loving person, just hey Anthony, you know, we talk, we discuss. And she said, you know, let's create. Oh, until today we have this day called LASA, which is love all serve all day. Regardless of whether you want to support gay freedom, whether you want to support a Buddhist temple, your mosque activities, if you are Christ centered that you want to serve the church. It's an additional day of paid leave throughout the year. Love all, serve all day. And you do whatever. You just let us know what you're going to do and go ahead and do it. So, you know, we could still keep to our Christ centered values and at the same time be inclusive. And, you know, again, I have my amazing leadership team to thank.
Henry Kaestner: So it's fascinating me. If I heard you right, you have an alpha course at Grab. Did I hear that right?
Anthony Tan: Yeah. Well, I don't know if it's still around, but.
Henry Kaestner: You've had one. And so that's, that's fascinating. Me, because you're unapologetically Christ centered. You're getting on a program with millions and millions and millions of listeners worldwide, as is the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast, of course. And you are very serious about your Christian faith, and yet you also have this love all serve, all concept. And so because you serve in a number of different countries that have a muslim context to them, so Christ centered and yet at the same time affirming them and allowing them to do these different things in this one day. That's a really interesting balance, and I think that's something that a lot of our entrepreneurs can be inspired, encouraged by. Most of the listeners to this podcast are not in serving and with lots of employees in a majority Muslim or Buddhist context. And yet you have this faithful presence where you're able to talk about why you do what you doing, and yet also not judge them, but affirm them where they are in their faith. Walk as well. It's a really interesting balance and it's awesome, awesome to hear.
Anthony Tan: Henry I can't take credit. It was Chin Yin our head of people's idea. I just ran with it.
Henry Kaestner: And and I take credit for it. It's awesome. Okay. So I want to move on then to the four Hs. You've got this way of loving your employees and I want you to role in. And by the way, I'm too glib. They're super important that you've been able to surround yourself with leaders that are able to help you stay grounded, which is hard to do when you've got a valuation like you have in and the growth that you have. I'm hearing your emphasis on mentors, but also to surround yourself with great people. And it's great to hear that some of these ideas that come from them. Talk to us about that the four Hs because there's there's good bridge into these principles that you have that feel a lot like some of the work of Patrick Lencioni only but you've made it your own through these four Hs. Tell us what they are, please.
Anthony Tan: Yeah. So citing from Matthew 25:40, you know, whatever you did for one of the least, of the brothers of mine you did for me, you know, and I always go back to the story of [...] and I can share in this context. And I've shared it at church before. You know, Jesus was just the most bar none incredible leader of all time. And he could kneel down, take his waist cloth and clean the feet of his disciples. Right. If he can do that, he is God. Who are we? So that servant leadership is so powerful again, you know, every day I just pray God, Jesus, I just want to be more like you. And I think that has taught us so much. So from that story, and you can just imagine it, God kneeling and washing the feet of His disciples. Who am I as a CEO? How do I serve our grabbers? How do I serve our customers? How do I serve our governments? How do I serve society? And we asked ourselves this, and again, it was another Christ centered individual at grab, he is still a grab. He was part of my office before and he came up with a concept and again I just took it and I ran with it and I said, Guys, we had all these other values, you know, ten or seven things. I said, you know, let's just let's just get rid of it and let's just simplify it to these four Hs. And the first H is a H for hunger that we just know that, look, the truth is we're not the smartest, guys in a room and we just got to out work on the guys on our right and on our left. And, you know, I've lived that all my life that I wasn't very smart, as, you know, when, you know, I was born and I could not even speak. But I just, you know, I, I just worked really, really, really hard until I collapsed literally. So I don't advice to you know work that crazy and that's why Chloe has come into my life and really added this work life harmony in my life but that hunger to really just go all out. Hunger to just fight for what you believe in and in the heart to serve society. And I always say, hey, guys, you know, are we willing to go on our knees, you know, and. Just truly serve society. And if you have that. And again, these are the DNA of grabbers. That means if you don't have it, these four Hs, you can't be promoted. Actually, we also let go of people who don't fit our culture bar. And then obviously we promote and we also double down on that. Now, can we do more of it for sure? Then there's honor, the third H which is honor. And do we honor our commitments? Do, we honor, our word. When we sign something, do you honor it? That's so important because people can talk. People can give all kinds of promises. But in the end do they go through with it and do they honor their word? And then the last is humility. Do we have the humility to know that? Look, I know that we are in this constant world of move and change. Can I take feedback? You know, can my my office, you know, my teammates here are some on this call, some outside of this call. You know, just give me frank feedback so that I can improve. And can we give each other feedback? We know that we are just work in progress. And, you know, we believe in this idea of kaizen or this idea of constant improvement. And do we have the humility to take feedback regardless of level? You know, recently I got feedback from, you know, many, many levels away from me. Last night I was with other grabbers, taking them out for dinner, and a merchant was giving me feedback that, hey, you know, he made some food and the driver didn't come. And, you know, I was there just apologizing to them merchant but just getting feedback all the time and having the humility to take that feedback to improve.
William Norvel: Hmm. Hey, man. Anthony, William. Here? That's so good. I love how you talk to about we hire, fire, promote, you know, on these values. I think I see a lot of companies that have taken time to write these values down and they don't integrate them that way. And you ask how they're laid out, like, well, you know, they're kind of on the wall and we talk about them every now and then, but I don't think I've seen them really mean much unless they're really put into practice. And you can tell people at their review, you know, this is the ranking system. No matter what else you did, it has to fit into this. And and that's just inspiring. And I hope our listeners can hear that. I'd love to shift this to timestamp this a little bit. We're in kind of an unprecedented time right now. You know, if you're listening to this, we're in the midst of the COVID pandemic. And, you know, that's a that's a tough time for everyone. And I would love to hear a little bit about maybe two different things. One, how you cared for people, including your employees, and how you've had to go through that. And then two just your business model, which I imagine it had to change quite a bit or innovate around things that you didn't have to before. How have you done that in such a scale and across different countries and all types of things like that?
Anthony Tan: Yeah. So just to go back, William, to your point, hey, first of all, can we do more of culture? We can. And we are far from where we need to be. And, you know, we have, again, great teammates who keep pushing that. My co-founder pushes a culture and reinforcing this four Hs a lot more. So we are a big work in progress now with regards to this pandemic, this crisis that we're living in today in Southeast Asia, we saw it COVID 19. It just took such a impact. I mean, it was such an uneven social impact. So Southeast Asia, you know, close to 80, 90% of the economy is driven by a lot of informal work. There's a lot of it's not formalized and there's a lot of I mean, you can go to a market today, a wet market today, and you see children are working in wet markets. Right. Some of it's just children of their father, mother at little shop. But there's so much informal economy. And, you know, when there's no safety net for for for our folks, what we saw that COVID 19 basically did was when they went into lockdowns and I talked to a lot of ministers about this, the governments were going through this dichotomy or this just poll that was taking place, which was, do we provide economy, livelihood or do we save lives? And because, you know, it's poor.
Anthony Tan: In this region outside of Singapore's, it's actually quite poor. And, you know, especially with [...] tier 3 tier 4 cities in Indonesia, Henry knows this very well. Poverty is real. And, you know, the government had to close economies. So when that happened, literally people I mean, I know stories, I didn't see it because I'm here in Singapore. But I know in my friends in Manila telling me that the Jimny drivers Jimny drivers. They're not all drivers, but they are drivers of our local mode of transport in Manila are becoming beggars, beggars on the street. So that's what the toll that's taken place. Now, what have we done? This is where our focus has really doubled down on how can we help those most impacted by the crisis. So we have gig workers, we have health care workers and we have informal economy workers. So first on gig workers, what we did was we scaled our food and grocery delivery stats, scaled, you know, by by several acts, actually, that saved the company. We were very, very blessed. It just as economies came to a standstill because of a lockdown. Essentially, transport dropped by 90% in some cities and 90% imagine if we just had mobility, you know the economies that went into lockdown. We lost, you know, close to 90% of our business in some cities. But the food business just, you know, it when it was the perfect hedge, if you may, and because our drivers, you know, whether they are car drivers, or the motorbike drivers, a lot of them and we lobbied and partners, lobbied and partnered with the government and they said, okay, we allow your car drivers even not just only your motorbike drivers that took you know in Indonesia are motorbike drivers also takes food and also delivers e-commerce where in Singapore, for example car drivers weren't allowed. And again, you know, all glory to him. We won and the government allowed our drivers to also send and deliver food and e-commerce deliveries for that just part. So our drivers then had lots to work. You know, it clearly didn't solve all their problems for sure, but we were able to move over 150,000 drivers in a very short period of time. I remember in one of our cities, we moved 80,000 drivers in two days. So from just moving people to moving food and e-commerce deliveries. So that was helping out what we call our micro-entrepreneurs drivers. Guys like that. Number two, our other set of micro-entrepreneurs are merchants. Some are very, very small, some owned literally a porridge store by the side of the street all the way to the McDonald's and shake shacks in the world. So we spend a lot of time focusing. And again, we partnered governments to digitize a lot of these small businesses. So in a very, very short time, again in the past 3 to 4 months, we onboarded over 80,000 new merchants. And these are new merchants. If you include that number of outlets, you're talking you know, some had three outlets, you know, even though they're small enterpreneurs, they have three outlets, you know, that's 240,000 so outlets. And people we provide it. And all your waitstaff, you know, because the stores were closed at a front end, the kitchens was opened they send their staff to the kitchens to pump out food for us to deliver. And then after the third, you know, it was wheter, our customers delivering food, but more because they were in lockdown and groceries, but all the way to hospitals. So we again partnered governments. So I just had dinner with the CEO of one of the largest hospitals in Singapore, and he's also the center of infectious diseases. And so reports to this hospital. And he said, you know, because 70% of cases in Singapore was handled by this hospital. And so it was very sad. You know, thank God our team knows this. I didn't know this, but a lot of people didn't even want to take the nurses to the hospital because the drivers were like, holy cow, you know, they have COVID, right? So they didn't get the love and care. And this is a time where you want nurses to the hospitals. So our country had worked with the Nurse Association, worked at the hospitals. We created something called grab care. And in Singapore alone, over 15,000 driver partners signed up to ferry hospital workers to and from work in Indonesia. We delivered thousands and thousands of COVID testing kits and we created Joint Venture to provide telemedicine to all our customers in Indonesia.
William Norvel: Wow. It's an amazing story of so many things that you were able to figure out, right? I mean, I know you said it quickly, but for our listeners, you lost 90% of your business. I mean, that is a very large number, you know, and you were still able to find an opportunity and work with your team. And your team was on the lookout for how can we? And so you one lost your business. You saved your business and 2 you saved a ton of merchants that likely would have gone under without the innovation. So it saved your business. It saved their business. Just a beautiful story of sort of what's going on there. And but also, just like you were at the forefront of your business being impacted by this pandemic and and were able to come through it. And unfortunately, we have to move towards our close right now. Yeah, I think we have like 87 different twists and turns. We could go down and maybe we'll beg somebody for more of your time, some other time. But we love to close our time with just asking where you might be in God's word. And that could be the season. Maybe that he's put something on your heart. It could be this morning. Maybe as you woke up today, God gave you a word from His Scripture, how we believe it's living and it's fun to see how God's word transcends our guest and our listeners to continue to teach us.
Anthony Tan: Well, if you ask me one verse that's really stuck with me in Micah 6:8 , you know how we honor how we serve humbly. You know, we've lived by that. And I think that's something that I have to just keep doing. I, frankly have felt that it's been really tough on many. Right. And, you know, if I can just say the whole verse, you know, one, does the Lord require of you to act justly, love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.
