he headlines this week with the acquisition of Delivery Hero’s Foodpanda delivery in Taiwan for US$600 million. Taiwan will mark the company’s ninth market and its first outside Southeast Asia. The acquisition is expected to close in the second half of this year. Grab will pay $600 million in cash for a business that generated about $1.8 billion in gross merchandise value last year and is already profitable on an adjusted EBITDA basis. The valuation, roughly 0.33 times GMV, has placed the deal firmly in the realm of disciplined capital allocation. A disciplined expansion  After years of investor pressure to rein in losses, Grab has spent the past two years reshaping its narrative, from growth at all costs to sustainable profitability. The company reiterated its 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance of US$700 million to US$720 million and expects the Taiwan business to contribute at least $60 million in incremental EBITDA by 2028.  In Southeast Asia, Grab has moved decisively into the black. The company has streamlined underperforming verticals, tightened cost discipline, and leaned into its core ecosystems of ride‑hailing, food and grocery delivery, payments and logistics. Grab reported its first full-year net profit last year, alongside record revenue of US$3.37 billion, up 20 per cent year-on-year. Adjusted EBITDA rose 60 per cent to US$500 million, while on-demand GMV climbed to US$22.1 billion, reflecting steady growth in both mobility and deliveries.  Across the region, Grab now serves more than 50 million monthly transacting users on more than 2.5 billion transactions per year, with its platform generating tens of billions of dollars in annual economic value, roughly equivalent to about 0.5 per cent of Southeast Asia’s combined GDP.  Can success in Southeast Asia translate to Taiwan? While the company has maintained consistent performance in Southeast Asia, the question is whether Grab can replicate that success in Taiwan. Taiwan, Tan argues, feels like familiar ground. “Taiwan is a natural next step for us. The high density of Taiwanese cities is like the busy streets of Southeast Asia, where we’ve spent years honing our tech,” he said. “We know these environments, and we believe we will create a great delivery experience there.” According to the company’s investor update, household incomes are among the highest in the region, and more than 40 per cent of households are single-person households.  Tan speaks as much about culture as he does about scale – about understanding food habits, seasonal preferences, even the idea of “heating” and “cooling” foods rooted in Chinese tradition. “This local understanding is the most critical thing to me. It’s how we push ourselves to serve our consumers and partners better than anyone else, in every market we enter,” Tan said.  Taiwan is, in effect, a more concentrated version of the environments where Grab has already built scale. Foodpanda, the business Grab is acquiring, already has an extensive reach across 21 cities and a strong presence beyond major urban centres.  Grab believes it can replicate its ecosystem, including ride-hailing, food delivery, payments and logistics, in Taiwan. In Southeast Asia, that ecosystem has been a key advantage. Grab’s platform connects tens of millions of users with merchants and drivers, allowing it to cross-sell services, optimise logistics and generate data-driven efficiencies. The company plans to introduce the same infrastructure in Taiwan, including its proprietary mapping system and AI-driven tools for merchants. “We will localise our AI-enabled products to help merchants grow and improve earnings for delivery partners,” Tan said. Grab also plans to migrate users, merchants and delivery partners from Foodpanda to its own platform by early next year. The transition will start with a parallel period where both apps run side by side, followed by a gradual yet deliberate shift of users, orders, loyalty points and payment flows onto the Grab ecosystem. Further reading: What a Grab-GoTo merger could mean for Southeast Asia’s ride hailing industry.