Grab: The Rideshare King of Asia

How did Grab become South East Asia’s go-to app for not just ridesharing, but… well… for pretty much everything.

In Southeast Asia, apps are so last decade. Grab is one of Southeast Asia’s most successful startups, with the ridesharing platform opening in 2012 and reaching a $1 Billion dollar valuation in 2016. After going public in 2021, the company is now worth around $9 Billion. 🤯 Today, they even take out Uber as the top ride-sharing app in Southeast Asia, a feat that surely have NYC yellow taxis seething with jealousy. So how does a small startup go from being the Private Steve Rodgers of rideshare apps to a superior first Avenger, Captain America-esque industry leader? One word: superapp. 🦸

“Superapp” platforms like Grab are different than platforms in the West because they offer a closed ecosystem of many services that offer a seamless and integrated experience. Think about how over the weekend you were hungry, so you consider whether or not you should hop in an Uber or Lyft to get yourself to the restaurant of your choice. Then you think to yourself, maybe I’ll just get takeout, so you re-download Uber Eats and door dash to see what’s available. Of course, you also should probably check to make sure you have enough cash in your checking account using your Chase mobile app. By the time you’ve downloaded, clicked, logged in, and checked out, you’re practically withering away from hunger. 😩Grab offers an all-in-one platform solution. Mobility, delivery, AND financial services all in one place so you can skip all the searching and get right to finding what you need. By prioritizing consumer convenience, Grab has remained the king of a category it created for Southeast Asia, the super-app platform. 👑

If you’re anywhere that’s not Southeast Asia you’re probably unfamiliar with the term “super-app,” but that doesn’t mean you haven’t already been exposed to the concept. Simply put, superapps provide users with multiple services via a single mobile interface. Think Zuckerberg’s metaverse, a digital world where you can shop, manage your finances, socialize, work, etc. Super-apps emulate a similar concept of an all-in-one service (without encompassing Zuckerberg’s desire to include every human activity under the sun,) and they’ve already thrived in the Asian market.

Banking services inside an app providing other services is foreign to the Western consumer. These platforms have succeeded in Asia thus far for a number of reasons, one being the region’s internet economy dynamics. Unlike the West, where users were introduced to the internet via desktop computers, in parts of Asia, many users first adopted the internet via smartphones. During this time, Western companies carved out corners of the internet for themselves and specialized in a few products or services — like messaging, finance, shopping, or streaming. As mobile platforms emerged, the internet maintained this structure with separate platforms for separate actions, and tech giants emerged to out-compete or acquire companies that operated in their niche. When the iPhone launched in 2007, less than 16% of China’s population was using the internet. Mobile platform adoption rapidly proliferated internet usage across Asia, essentially skipping the “desktop phase” that shaped many internet companies in the West. In Asia, internet companies could more easily select different features and develop them into one platform, just like Grab.

The One-Stop-Shop For… Everything?

Grab has maintained its seat on the Iron Throne of the ridesharing industry by revolutionizing its application and creating a one-stop-shop platform that offers accessible and convenient features that add value for its users. Apart from ridesharing, some of Grab’s features include:

• Food delivery
• Grocery delivery
• Package delivery
• Banking and payments
• Insurance
• Hotel and ticket booking

Grab’s ecosystem is comprehensive, fitting seamlessly into the flow of everyday life. These features make sense because they target specific habits and provide solutions for them. Grab has effectively designed its own category that it continues to dominate: a super-app platform for daily habits. Don’t have time to get groceries? Order them on Grab! Need to pay for your meal at a restaurant? Use GrabPay! The possibilities are endless and the convenience is real with super-apps. 🤩

A Simple Start

Before Grab, the ridesharing market in Southeast Asia faced a key problem: people looking for taxi services didn’t have a centralized service, so they had to find taxis or book a private driver. That’s when Grab changed the game and disentangled the ridesharing market by formalizing the taxi-hailing service. To maintain its advantage, Grab adapted its marketing materials to the different cultural nuances of its target markets, in a “hyper-local” growth strategy that allowed Grab to build rapport with customers and quickly expand into different markets.

Grab’s understanding of its target markets is apparent in its product as well as its marketing. For example, Grab understood early that a large portion of its target market does not have a credit card. They designed around this cultural reality by allowing its users to pay for its services in cash. Reducing barriers of entry endemic to their target market, Grab’s consideration for its customers allowed the company to reach explosive growth in Southeast Asia.

The Future:

Today, Grab operates in 480 cities across eight Southeast Asian countries: Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. It also holds about 75% of the overall ride bookings in the Southeast Asian region, with over 180 million users. However, despite its dominance in the rideshare market, Grab’s breadth could be seen as a weakness. Grab is an amalgamation of services, and each one is at risk of being outcompeted by a company that has a more comprehensive approach to a single service. Imagine if Meta added a ride-hailing, food delivery, hotel booking, or payment platform to their suite of products. Would they be able to compete with Uber, DoorDash, Hotels.com, or Paypal? Maybe not — Meta occupies social networking and connectivity, a specific niche of the West’s internet economy. However, internet companies in Asia are able to build platforms that have breadth and depth, like Grab. Grab can also further mitigate against competition because of (1) its company’s ability to successfully deploy services across industry lines, (2) its seamless and easily accessible product, and (3) its thoughtful design of a super-app that addresses users’ daily habits. These strengths act as a strong hedge against competition and solidify Grab as the Southeast Asia king of the super-app.

We love a good startup success story, and the moral of this one is convenience, convenience, convenience. Grab streamlines the user experience by putting all the services tied to ridesharing (from ordering a car, to having to pay for that car) in one place. Success stories like these inspire and challenge us to think about how we can create a convenient experience for users who are working with qualitative data. Resultid allows you to select a narrative to unlock the information you need to tell a unique and transformative story with your qualitative data. Grab has revolutionized the ridesharing market in Asia with a super-app model and similar multifunctional platforms that bring convenience and value to the customer may very well change the future of technology! 👨‍💻