Ride-hailing in Southeast Asia still has room to grow as investors proceed to speculate within the region’s largest ride-hailing company. The latest investment comes from tech giant Microsoft, which announced an investment in Grab. The undisclosed investment will create further growth for the Singapore-based company.
“Our partnership with Grab opens new opportunities for innovation in both a rapidly evolving industry and a growth region,” said Peggy Johnson, executive vice chairman, Microsoft
The two corporations also said they might collaborate on deep technology projects that include big data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. For example, Grab will explore the usage of Microsoft Azure’s data analytics and fraud detection services to raised predict and forestall fraudulent transactions on the Grab platform; and explore image recognition and computer vision technologies that may improve the user and driver experience during pickups.
Grab CEO Ming Maa said the partnership will aim to drive higher user experience across services. The agreement will enable on-demand transportation and other online-to-offline services to be improved with higher big data and artificial intelligence.
Microsoft’s decision to speculate in Grab will intensify regional competition in passenger transport, as one other tech giant like Google also invested in Grab competitor Go-Jek in January.
Go-Jek, which just began its first expansion to Vietnam in August, is an Indonesian ride-hailing company. Today, the corporate becomes the only rival to Grab after Uber left the Southeast Asian market. While Grab is already present in eight Southeast Asian countries and has a complete valuation of around 11 billion US dollars.
“As a global technology leader, Microsoft’s investment in Grab underscores our position as a leading homegrown technology player in the region,” added Ming Maa.
