Grab eyes WeChat-style app to cement regional position
South-east Asian ride-hailing group opens platform to developers and peers
Written by Louise Lucas for Financial Times.
Grab is opening up its platform to third-party developers and peers as part of efforts by the south-east Asian start-up to pivot from a ride-hailing app to a “one-stop shop”.
The revamped platform is intended to be similar to Tencent’s ubiquitous WeChat messaging app in China, where e-commerce, gaming and other developers piggyback off WeChat’s 1bn+ accounts. Grab’s move is aimed at keeping consumers on its platform longer, thus collecting more data that it ultimately can use to generate income.
It is part of efforts by the six-year-old Singapore-based company to cement its dominant position in the region as rivals including Indonesia’s Go-Jek — backed by Google, Tencent and Temasek — also rev up. Go-Jek plans to invest $500m to expand into Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam in coming months.
The move also suggests that south-east Asia is more closely hewing to the China tech model of conglomerates offering a multitude of services, rather than the more focused approach of their US tech peers.
However, Grab’s ambitious bid to develop a platform across disparate countries will bring the company into competition with groups supported by China’s tech giants, including Alibaba-backed e-commerce operator Lazada, and Sea, a platform spanning retail, gaming and payments in which Tencent has invested.
The relaunch also comes as Grab faces scrutiny at home by Singapore’s antitrust watchdog, which last week challenged Grab’s purchase of rival Uber’s operations in the region, raising the prospect that the group’s landmark deal may need to be unwound.
The Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore said Uber’s March agreement to fold its operations into Grab, in return for a 27.5 per cent stake in the larger business, had “substantially lessened” competition because the two were each others’ closest competitors. Regulators, citing complaints from riders, said that had allowed Grab to raise prices and lower the quality of its services.
Grab said its newly relaunched app should help push revenues up to $1bn by the end of the year, with co-founder and chief executive Anthony Tan adding that bringing developers on board its platform would accelerate growth.
“South-east Asia is set to be the fourth-largest economy by 2050. More people are moving into the middle class, technology infrastructure is catching up, and companies must adapt fast to shifting emerging market opportunities,” he said.
The revised app also will include a news feed, local information and “useful seasonal information, such as where the nearest mosques are during Ramadan or even the latest football scores at the World Cup”, according to Grab.
Original source: Financial Times
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