Tan Hooi Ling () is a

Malaysian Malaysian may refer to: * Something from or related to Malaysia, a country in Southeast Asia * Malaysian Malay, a dialect of Malay language spoken mainly in Malaysia * Malaysian people, people who are identified with the country of Malaysia regard ...

internet entrepreneur based in

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

. She is best known as the co-founder and

Chief Operating Officer A chief operating officer or chief operations officer, also called a COO, is one of the highest-ranking executive positions in an organization, composing part of the "C-suite". The COO is usually the second-in-command at the firm, especially if t ...

(COO) of

an ride-hailing company, Grab Holdings Inc. Tan was a business analyst at

McKinsey & Company McKinsey & Company is a global management consulting firm founded in 1926 by University of Chicago professor James O. McKinsey, that offers professional services to corporations, governments, and other organizations. McKinsey is the oldest and ...

before she co-founded Grab with Anthony Tan while attending

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...

Early life

Raised in a middle-class

Malaysian Chinese Malaysian Chinese (; Malay: ''Orang Cina Malaysia''), alternatively Chinese Malaysians, are Malaysian citizens of Han Chinese descent. They form the second largest ethnic group after the Malay majority constituting 22.4% of the Malaysian po ...

household in

Kuala Lumpur , anthem = '' Maju dan Sejahtera'' , image_map = , map_caption = , pushpin_map = Malaysia#Southeast Asia#Asia , pushpin_map_caption = , coordinates = , su ...

by a

civil engineer A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing ...

father and a remisier mother alongside an older brother, who is a software programmer and lives in

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

, Tan is the youngest of two children in her family. She went to state-schools while living in

Petaling Jaya ) , website = , image_skyline = , image_caption = ''From top, left to right:Skyline of Petaling Jaya, the 1 Utama Mall integrated with Bandar Utama Station, the Kota Darul Ehsan arch, the Petaling J ...

. Raised in

Kuala Lumpur , anthem = '' Maju dan Sejahtera'' , image_map = , map_caption = , pushpin_map = Malaysia#Southeast Asia#Asia , pushpin_map_caption = , coordinates = , su ...

, Tan moved to the United Kingdom to attend the

University of Bath (Virgil, Georgics II) , mottoeng = Learn the culture proper to each after its kind , established = 1886 (Merchant Venturers Technical College) 1960 (Bristol College of Science and Technology) 1966 (Bath University of Technology) 1971 (univ ...

where she received a

bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six ...

mechanical engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and mathematics principles with materials science, to design, analyze, manufacture, and ...

. After graduation, she landed a job at McKinsey in Malaysia. McKinsey later sponsored Tan's

MBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accounti ...

education at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

, where she met future Grab co-founder Anthony Tan. They would both subsequently move to Singapore in 2014.

Education

Tan attended the

and graduated in 2006 with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. She later graduated from

with a Master of Business Administration in 2011.

Career

Eli Lilly

While studying at the University of Bath, Tan took a year off school to do an industrial placement at

Eli Lilly Eli Lilly (July 8, 1838 – June 6, 1898) was an American soldier, pharmacist, chemist, and businessman who founded the Eli Lilly and Company pharmaceutical corporation. Lilly enlisted in the Union Army during the American Civil War and r ...

Basingstoke Basingstoke ( ) is the largest town in the county of Hampshire. It is situated in south-central England and lies across a valley at the source of the River Loddon, at the far western edge of The North Downs. It is located north-east of Southa ...

. Her time at the pharmaceutical company taught Tan that decisions were made at the management level and motivated her to change her career trajectory and research graduate finance and management programs in order to incorporate engineering perspectives into business decisions, thus having the power to make changes at the management level.

McKinsey

Despite not knowing what the company did, Tan signed up for an event held by

consulting firm A consulting firm or simply consultancy is a professional service firm that provides expertise and specialised labour for a fee, through the use of consultants. Consulting firms may have one employee or thousands; they may consult in a broad range ...

McKinsey & Company in

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

, eventually landing a job with the company where she performed incredibly well that they sponsored her MBA education at Harvard Business School - where she met fellow Malaysian and future co-founder of Grab, Anthony Tan, in the class of 2011.

Grab

While at Harvard Business School, Tan worked on a

business plan A business plan is a formal written document containing the goals of a business, the methods for attaining those goals, and the time-frame for the achievement of the goals. It also describes the nature of the business, background information on t ...

with HBS classmate, Anthony Tan, for a "mobile app that connects taxi seekers directly with taxi drivers closest to their location in the chaotic Malaysian urban environment", which would later become GrabTaxi. The inspiration came from Tan's experiences with a lack of safety in Malaysia. When she was working at McKinsey, she and her mom developed a "manual GPS system" to track where she was while she was coming home. Tan would send her mom the car number plates and ping her when she passed any of the large milestones so her mom would know how far away she was. Every night her mom would stay up waiting for her to get back home because back then, when you searched "World's Worst Taxi" the top hit for the few pages was Kuala Lampur, Malaysia. The pair's business plan was the runner-up in the HBS New Venture Competition in 2011, winning $25,000. Using the proceeds from the competition and their own personal funds, Tan Hooi Ling and Anthony Tan launched the

mobile app A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on d ...

lication, first called MyTeksi, in June 2012. Although the pair had started the company, Tan had to return to McKinsey after graduation to serve out her bond with the consulting firm as a condition of sponsoring her education. She later moved on to San Francisco-based software company

Salesforce Salesforce, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides customer relationship management (CRM) software and applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, a ...

, while taking time out of her schedule at the company to help out Anthony with Grab in

Southeast Asia Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, south-eastern region of Asia, consistin ...

. She returned to work full-time on Grab in 2015. Upon returning, she took on the title of COO, and focused on 3 key areas - product,

human resources Human resources (HR) is the set of people who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector, industry, or economy. A narrower concept is human capital, the knowledge and skills which the individuals command. Similar terms include m ...

, and customer experience.

Personal life

Tan is a self-professed

introvert The traits of extraversion (also spelled extroversion Retrieved 2018-02-21.) and introversion are a central dimension in some human personality theories. The terms ''introversion'' and ''extraversion'' were introduced into psychology by Carl J ...

, keeping a lower profile than her co-founder, Anthony Tan, but admitted she likes it that way. She also considers

swing dancing Swing dance is a group of social dances that developed with the swing style of jazz music in the 1920s–1940s, with the origins of each dance predating the popular " swing era". Hundreds of styles of swing dancing were developed; those that ha ...

, which she picked up in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, as one of her life accomplishments. Tan also plays the

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

and

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

, having a diploma in the former and a Grade 8 in the latter.Tan, S. (2018, March 26). Lunch With Sumiko: Grab whiz Tan Hooi Ling happy to stay low-key. Retrieved November 18, 2019, from https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/grab-whiz-happy-to-stay-low-key.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tan, Hooi Ling Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Alumni of the University of Bath Harvard Business School alumni McKinsey & Company people Malaysian expatriates in Singapore Malaysian people of Chinese descent People from Kuala Lumpur