Chief Operating Officer Alex Hungate said that earlier in the year, Grab had been worried about a global recession and was"very careful and judicious about any hiring", and as a result, it had not got to the"desperate" point of a hiring freeze or mass layoffs.
"You want to make sure that we're conserving capital. The hurdle for making a hire has definitely been raised." In recent weeks, Southeast Asia's largest e-commerce firm Shopee cut jobs in various countries and shut some overseas operations after parent Sea reported widening losses and scrapped its annual e-commerce forecast.
Last month, Grab said it was shutting dozens of so-called dark stores - distribution hubs for on-demand groceries and slowing the roll-out of its"cloud kitchen" centralised facilities for deliveries. It caught global attention in 2018 when it acquired Uber's Southeast Asian business after a costly five-year battle.