Ride-hailing company Grab has launched GrabPlatform and GrabFresh to tap further into the Indonesian market, its representatives said on Tuesday (10/07).
Grab is going to upgrade its app to focus on people’s daily needs and make it become an everyday superapp.
For this purpose it just launched GrabPlatform, a new interface which provides transportation, news, e-commerce and food delivery services. The food feature, GrabFresh, is operated by HappyFresh, Southeast Asia’s leading online grocery shopping company.
Now the company is testing the news feed feature, which is intended to engage users more while they are using the company’s ride-hailing services.
“Partnering strategy, or we call it open platform strategy, has been favored by us to offer more to customers. It has been proved very effective in boosting our business” said Grab co-founder and chief executive Anthony Tan said on Tuesday.
In 2017, Grab acquired Kudo, Indonesia’s leading online-to-offline payment service, which according to Tan has been very helpful for the company’s expansion.
“After partnering with Kudo, we’ve grown tremendously across cities in Indonesia. And then with OVO, who is the country’s leading e-wallet. We recognize that we can’t be the best in everything, so we find the best partners. Kudo was the best agent network, OVO is the best e-wallet and TPI [ride-hailing service Teknologi Pengangkutan Indonesia] is one of the best rental partners,” he said.
“If it wasn’t for Kudo, we could not have grown in Indonesia that fast. We went operational from 20 cities to over 100 cities in Indonesia, because of Kudo.”
The region’s leading ride-hailing app is facing rivalry from local competitor Go-Jek, which in May announced expansion to Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
According to App Annie, Go-Jek was leading in Indonesia, recording 15 million active users every week last year, much better than Grab with 2.5 million users.
In March, Grab merged with ride-hailing giant Uber for the latter’s Southeast Asian operations.