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Official Site: Grab.com
Wikipedia: Grab (company) Page Sections History Article Index |
History
The following section is an excerpt from Wikipedia's Grab (company) page on 28 September 2019, text available via the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Grab Holdings Inc., formerly known as MyTeksi and GrabTaxi, is a Singapore based transportation network company. In addition to transportation, the company offers food delivery and digital payments services via mobile app. The company was originally founded in Malaysia and later moved its headquarters to Singapore. It now operates in the Southeast Asian countries of Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, and Cambodia. It is the region's first "decacorn" (a startup with a valuation of over US$10 billion).
In 2016, Grab opened a major development centre and office in Seattle to serve as a tech hub to attract talent in the United States.
The idea of creating a taxi-booking mobile app for Southeast Asia similar to those being pioneered in the US first came from Anthony Tan, who is the youngest of the three brothers of the family that operates Tan Chong Motors, the authorised distributor for Nissan cars in Malaysia. When a friend visited him in Malaysia, Anthony heard his friend complaining about the horrible experience of riding taxis in the country. In particular, his friend was concerned that his taxis may be taking an incorrect route or overcharging him. Taking inspiration from Garrett Camp's ride sharing concept, Anthony decided to take this problem up as a project while studying at Harvard Business School. When he presented the project to his professors, the comments he received were that this project was "difficult to implement" despite the success of other ride hailing services in the U.S. such as Uber. The project won second place at the Business Plan Contest at Harvard Business School. The app was also selected as the finalist at Harvard’s Minimum Viable Product Funding award.
In June 2012, Anthony Tan quit his position as the head-of-marketing of his family business Tan Chong Motors at Kuala Lumpur and launched the "My Teksi" app in Malaysia (known as "GrabTaxi" in other countries) together with Tan Hooi Ling, another Harvard graduate. Tan Hooi Ling, Anthony's classmate, who was also a consultant at McKinsey & Company, drew a business plan for promoting the mobile app. MyTeksi was launched with initial grant of US$ 25,000 from Harvard Business school and Anthony Tan's personal capital. Anthony Tan became the CEO of the company. He was able to arrange meetings with the largest taxi companies, but was initially met with negative responses despite the model's success elsewhere. Not only was he told to not "...sell this stupid app. Nobody will use it. Taxi drivers will steal your phone – they’re terrible people," he was even told to go back to his family business. Only the fifth taxi company he spoke to, who operated a fleet of only 30 taxis decided to give him a chance.
Nadiem Makarim (Go-Jek co-founder and former classmate of Anthony at Harvard Business School) acknowledged GrabTaxi as his inspiration for his motorbike hailing business in Indonesia. However, increasing rivalry between Grab and Go-Jek in Indonesia had soured the friendship between Nadiem and Anthony. In 2014, Grab moved its company headquarters from Malaysia to Singapore. According to the company's filings with the Singapore government in 2017, Anthony Tan also acquired Singaporean citizenship.
GrabTaxi expanded to the Philippines in August 2013, and to Singapore and Thailand in October of the same year. In 2014, Grab in partnership with HDT Holdings, introduces 100 BYD e6 electric taxis in Singapore to form the biggest e-taxi fleet in Southeast Asia. In 2014, GrabTaxi further continued its growth and expansion to new countries: first launching in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam in February, and Jakarta in Indonesia in June. In May 2014, the company launched GrabCar. It serves as an alternative form of transportation that uses personal cars instead of taxis through a licensed partner in an effort to overcome the lack of public transportation during peak hours. In November 2014, GrabTaxi launched its first GrabBike service in Ho Chi Minh City as a trial service. By 2015, GrabBike's motorcycle service rides had spread throughout Vietnam and Indonesia. GrabBike also provides medical insurance for their passengers and drivers. In February 2015, the company launched GrabCar+ (a service that provides a fleet of higher-end cars) in the Philippines.
In January 2016, GrabTaxi was rebranded as "Grab" which encompasses all the company's products under one roof: GrabCar (personal cars), GrabBike (motorcycle taxis), GrabHitch (carpooling) and GrabExpress (last mile delivery) with a new, redesigned logo. In October 2016, Grab added an in-app instant messaging feature called "GrabChat" to allow simple communication between riders and drivers. GrabChat can even translate messages if the set languages of the driver and passenger are different. In December 2016, Grab introduced "GrabShare" which offers taxi and car sharing services.
On 7 February 2017, Grab got into coach-style seating for passengers. And on 9 March 2017, Grab introduced GrabFamily for young children below 7 years old, to fulfill regulations where children under 1.35 metres must be placed on a child booster seat or child restraint. The LTA ruled that private hire cars under Uber or Grab, are not exempted from child seat requirement. GrabFamily vehicles offer child restraint seats. Additionally, children under 1.35 metres are not allowed into private hire cars, and thus can only use either GrabFamily or a taxi. On 22 March 2017, Grab launched a simplified flat-fare structure, JustGrab. Since 24 May 2017, a new multiple stop rule charged $5 extra for addition of a stop outside the original booking.
On 9 March 2017, LTA introduced a new regulation of private hire cars called Private Hire Car Vocational Licence (PDVL), with effect from 1 July 2017, and tagged to the route number. This is to ensure the quality of private hire car services, and to prevent route fraud. In April 2018, Grab introduced the new car service, GrabCar Plus, which offers a larger vehicle in exchange for a 20% premium fee. The existing GrabCar (Economy), will be slowly phased out.
On 26 March 2018, Grab merged with Uber's Southeast Asian operations.
In November 2018, Grab invested in Indonesian conglomerate Lippo Group's Ovo platform to compete against rival Go-Jek. Ovo is Indonesia's leading digital e-payment platform.
On 30 January 2019, Grab announced that it will build a new Singapore headquarters in one-north as it expands its operations. It is expected to be ready in the fourth quarter of 2020. The US$135M facility will be developed and managed by Ascendas Reit (now under CapitaLand). Grab held its ground-breaking ceremony for its future headquarters on 29 March 2019, during which it announced a new function to plan journeys and pay for public transportation fares. The headquarters will support a total of 3,000 employees, consolidating its office space currently spread around four locations.
On 20 February 2019, the company launched GrabPet in Singapore. Under the new service, passengers with pets will be allocated to Grab drivers who have received training in pet-handling, and welcome animals in their vehicles.
On 3 March 2019, Grab announced that they would be implementing a S$4 penalty charge for users who cancel Singapore bookings 5 minutes after it is made. It would also apply if the driver waits at the pickup point for longer than 5 minutes. Supposed to be implemented on 11 March 2019, the implementation of this policy was delayed to 25 March 2019. In Malaysia, the cancellation fee ranges from RM3 to RM5.
| Date | Article | Author/Source |
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| 21 March 2017 | Taxi-Hailing App 'Grab' Beats Uber to Myanmar | VOA News |