Grab – Southeast Asia's Leading Ride-hailing Platform

GrabTaxi Holdings Pte. Ltd. (branded as simply Grab) is a Singapore-based technology company that offers ride-hailing, ride sharing, and logistics services through its app. Now spread across 40 cities in 7 countries across Southeast Asia (as of April 2017), Grab is expanding rapidly around the region, to enable users and drivers with its mobile application to provide a seamless experience for moving people and food (recently introduced) from one place to another.

Grab is an e-hailing service and not a transportation company. It is easy to say that through the application, which can be downloaded on the phone, a person can register/login through IC number for local Malaysians and passport number for expatriates. Then through the menu, one can enter the location and the destination for the goal address and the driver can pick and drop the person.

Grab has given great quality work of the taxi requesting application, the versatile application interface, as well as its administration. The server application gets client information, formulates it, sending to the specific administrations and applications. This relationship between various components of the versatile application framework makes it conceivable and successful. The company has claimed to have over 68 million app downloads with having achieved 1 billion rides and 66 concurrent rides in 1 second across seven countries, occupying 97% market share in third party taxi hailing market and 72% in the private hailing market. In today’s disruptive market, grab has taken a stand in addressing the needs of the customers by introducing Grab Rewards which helps their consumers in various ways for example rewards can be used to reduce fare rides, subscription to Spotify etc., giving them an edge over its competitors, hence the advantage in gaining a large market and are making strides every day in improving even though the company is still incurring a huge loss.

Market Strategy

Grab has identified itself as the prime e-hailing service which stands for three broad terms- speed, safety and certainty. It has used its user friendly application in making sure that each consumer is personally catered to keeping in mind time, time taken not just during the journey but also time taken before it (when a consumer books a ride, he/she should not be waiting for long for a grab driver to pick him/her up). They have also kept in mind that safety of the consumer is given the top-most priority as seen the opposite with it competition like Uber. They have personally made sure to not go through a problem to take preventive measures by installing a panic button in the Grab car, in case of any emergency and also have made sure to appoint drivers whose details are with Grab. The phone numbers of the consumers are not given to drivers but instead they have a private chat box for any communication is needed. Grab has also made sure that once a consumer opens the application to book a Grab car, he/she is certain to have no cancellations without any valid reason by having extensive share of drivers been given at need.

Grab has made sure to cater to the needs of not just the younger generation by introducing just for individuals but also for family by having a Grab 6-seater option for example a Toyota Innova instead of a Myvi and also they have a Grab car premium and Grab Taxi executive for an option for consumers to have a luxurious car for higher rate. They have targeted a market from 18 years of age to 50 years and above as well but surprisingly all this market has been captured by Grab without spending a lot on advertisements. Until recently, Grab had only used social media platforms like Facebook and twitter in reaching out to its consumers. Now it is seen to use advertisement banners on the sides of the Grab car, giving them a chance to tap into a side they haven’t yet fully utilized to the fullest which could result in high amounts of funds being invested.