Want to succeed in business? Find a problem to solve | Anthony Tan and Amane Dannouni

**Elise Hu** (0:02)
You're listening to TED Talks Daily. I'm your host, Elise Hu. What would you do if you felt completely safe moving about the world? The answers could be simple and practical, like walking home alone at night. Safety can also be life-changing, because it leads to more opportunities in work and life. Entrepreneur Anthony Tan wanted to unlock possibility by solving safety.
In a recorded interview for TED at BCG in 2024, he sits down with digital strategist Amane Dannouni to detail how he got there in Southeast Asia and how that project led to a greater calling after the break.

**Amane Dannouni** (0:43)
So Anthony, you're well known in the tech community, you're well known in Southeast Asia. But for those who don't know you, you're the CEO and co-founder of Grab. Grab is essentially the combination of an Uber plus a DoorDash plus a PayPal all on the same platform. You are Malaysian-born, you're based in Singapore, you are a son, you're a husband, you're a father, you're a man of faith.
Am I missing anything?

**Anthony Tan** (1:10)
Well, first of all, I'm squirming.
I grew up with Asian parents, so I'm not used to such kind words. But thank you so much for that.

**Amane Dannouni** (1:18)
You're welcome, you're welcome. So Anthony, you've had this question a million times, but I think it's the right way to start.
You co-founded Grab. Can you walk us through the initial idea that you had for the business 12 years ago?

**Anthony Tan** (1:31)
Historically, you would say, at least in the Asian, which I grew up with, methodology was really, hey, let's build a business, get rich, when you're 50s, 60s, then contribute back and build your own philanthropy or foundation.

**Amane Dannouni** (1:49)
So why not that? Because it sounds intuitive, right? So make money out of your business and then take that money and do something good at some point. Why not choose that route?

**Anthony Tan** (1:58)
I think there could be a few scenarios when that happens. One is you get tempted and don't want to give back.
Two is you actually cause negative externalities, right? You pollute, you whatever, because if it's all you are inspired by is profit maximization, then unfortunately you cause a lot of harm. The argument is yes, you could then create a foundation to sort of solve that. But we're gonna talk about, when I came out, I was in early 30s, and then that's gonna be 30 years of damage potentially versus in our case is literally building it from day one.
In fact, when we came up with the business plan, it was a for-profit social enterprise, a Forbesie or a double bottom line business. And we actually didn't even submit it for the business plan track. We actually submitted it for the social enterprise track. That was the intent.

**Amane Dannouni** (3:04)
So Anthony, out of all the social problems that you could have solved, you focused on safety for women and children in transportation and very specifically in Malaysia. Why is that?

**Anthony Tan** (3:17)
Safety was a very personal problem for us.
My co-founder and I, Ling, she used to finish work late at night, her consulting hours at 11 p.m. for example. She would then have to jump in a taxi and pretend that she's on a call with her mom, just so that the driver would know she's with somebody else. And if anything was to happen to her, she could call for help.
That was how she had to go through life as a consultant when she finished late hours.
So that's one personal. Second is we wanted to go for a problem that was even yourself, if you lived in the States, you just crossed over Mexico City 12 years ago, you probably were worried to take a random taxi as well. So it was sort of a global problem. The third, what we felt was when you could solve the safety problem, you actually unlock a lot of possibilities. So children could go to schools without being worried because it wasn't an affordability issue, they were scared to take taxis. Or women would be scared to take a taxi to work and then they would choose not to go to work and that leads to all kinds of second order effects. So we wanted to create or enable a group of people in society to whatever they can achieve and allow those options to take place. So now drivers have a lot more income. They then became susceptible to crime because they had a lot of cash because they were now earning a lot of money and they basically became a mobile ATM machine. And what we did then was we said, look, let's invent at that point in time, grab pay, which would take out cash from the driver's hands and keep them safe. And it was literally in the driver's wallet and it had ways of managing their safety.