Along For The Ride

Life as the wife of a young tech millionaire wasnt and still isnt all smooth sailing, CHLOE TONG tells zara zhuang. But with family at the centre, she has high hopes for the legacy and values her children will inherit

At 8 am on this Tuesday morning, Chloe Tong is sunshine personified. The 27-year-old wife of Grab co-founder and group CEO Anthony Tan flits about her apartment with airy ease and introduces herself sans a hint of sluggishness. Even before we arrive for the cover shoot (via Grab, of course — what else?), Tong’s children have been up and about: Emmanuel, aged two-and-half, is zipping around the dining room while 10-month-old Elizabeth in her floral headband beams at us from atop her high chair. And when the toddler begins to fuss a little, his mother coaxes him: “If you’re a good boy, after school today I’ll get you ice cream when I’m done.”

“We’re morning people,” Tong explains. “The whole house is like this at 7 am.”

While they’re finding a new rhythm for the family following the arrival of Elizabeth, they’ve also been spending more time in Jakarta. Indonesia is new frontiers for Grab, which holds 62 percent of the nation’s ride-hailing market and is on track to secure US$3 billion in funding by the end of the year.

None of this is as easy as it seems. “I think people forget how young we are,” Tong says. “It’s not even that it’s a multi-billion-dollar business — Anthony has to serve thousands of Grabbers [employees] and millions of drivers, customers and agents. And being his pillar of support and sounding board can be daunting and overwhelming at times.”

For Tong and Tan, there isn’t even time to enjoy an entire movie in one sitting; they are forced to split a film into three instalments viewed over the course of a month. “They’re very atypical kind of 27-year-old problems — and blessings too. I think having clear rules and being rooted in the same values that we started out with have allowed both of us to fly.”