Grab, Uber’s fierce rival in Southeast Asia, announced on November 6 that its service had surpassed one billion rides accomplished.
The company reached the milestone on October 26, when 66 simultaneous trips from seven markets pushed it to a ten-figure reach.
The company began operations in Malaysia in 2012 and today covers 142 cities in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines and Myanmar. The initial service involved booking licensed taxis, but has since expanded to incorporate Uber-style private hire, ride-sharing, motorcycle taxis and more.
Grab is backed by the likes of SoftBank and Didi in China – each of whom just invested $2 billion in the corporate – and its latest valuation of $6 billion makes it the highest-valued tech company in Southeast Asia. On the business side, it provides over two million drivers and over 68 million consumer app downloads.
By comparison, Uber reached five billion rides in June but doesn’t provide figures for the regions where it operates around the globe, while Didi can also be within the billion rides club. Lyft, the second-largest on-demand platform within the U.S., reported 500 million trips last summer, and that number is growing at a rate of a million a day.
Grab has evolved significantly over its five-year history, and has expanded into the fintech industry over the past 18 months.
The company, which only began offering card payments in early 2016, steadily added features similar to credit payments and peer-to-peer payments before last week making its GrabPay feature, which supports digital payments for rides, available to 3rd parties for the primary time. Initial sellers are Singaporean street food vendors – meaning the app might be used to purchase food without money or cards – and Grab plans to expand the service to other countries and various vendors.
“We talked and implemented our plan, but [this] “This is a significant milestone in making GrabPay a truly cash replacement,” Grab co-founder Hooi Ling Tan said in an interview with TechCrunch last week.
“If I leave my wallet at home, I can still pay for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Over time, I will be able to purchase goods such as appliances and groceries using GrabPay.”
Source : TechCrunch
