It appears as if ride-hailing company Grab might be acquiring rival Uber in South-East Asia. With the popularity of ride-hailing services in this region, Uber has rapidly been challenged by its competition, examples being Go-Jek in Indonesia and Grab elsewhere in ASEAN, reports Kr-Asia.com.
After dropping its China operations into the hands of Didi Chuxing in 2016, following a series of financial confrontations, Uber intended to focus its operations on ASEAN, the world’s fourth largest internet market. However, Grab, which started operations in Malaysia, claims it has overwhelming market share of the ride-hailing market regionally, with 95% of the third-party taxi and 71% of private ride-hailing, and completing 1 billion rides in South-east Asia.
Meanwhile, Uber has claimed a figure of 5 billion rides as of last June, but did not provide a breakdown of number of rides by country. It is said that Japan’s Softbank might be driving the merger of Grab and Uber, as the investment firm has a seat on the board of both companies and invested several billion US dollars into Uber last year.
Grab has taken most of the regional ride-hailing market, after offering cash payment as an option, something Uber was slow to implement in the mainly cash-driven economies of most ASEAN countries. Grab has a presence in more than 160 ASEAN and South Asian cities, being available in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, India, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Cambodia, while Uber can only be accessed in 60 cities in this region.
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All the best Grab! Pride of Malaysia
I always avoid Grab since many of their drivers are no different from dumb taxi drivers. Uber is much-much better. And what nonsense is this pride of Malaysia thing? Grab is a soulless Sinkieland company!
TanChong offshoot now a world beater yo !!
Don’t syiok sendiri. It is not really pride of Malaysia. It is still foreign brains that made it into a success here.
Many jaguh kampung syiok sendiri saying it is fully a Malaysian success story
Foreign brain??? Anthony Tan is MY yo!
Makes sense for Grab to take over Uber so Uber can concentrare in markets which itself is leading in the EU and the US especially when Softbank is the major stakeholder for both Uber and Grab. No point competing against your sister company right?
not a good thing. grab’s service has gone from bad to worse recently. number of drivers have also fallen quite significantly now that the perks are not as good as it used to be.
We all know too well what will happen when there’s a monopoly right?..
Kwap durian runtuh la..
https://paultan.org/2016/09/23/uber-receives-rm123m-investment-from-kwap/
Uber is just much further ahead with UI and ease-of-use. Grab is a headache to use, but have been successful in capturing hearts and minds and taking first-mover advantage. Most Grab users seem to not bother with Uber, and vice-versa. It could be that Uber is more serious with dealing in customer complaints, they take action against errant drivers, while Grab stays silent and sends drivers for “re-education”. In the long-run, more drivers were with Grab, and I think Grab had more promos running too. Its common knowledge that Uber drivers are better than Grab. I am an Uber driver, and many riders have told me Grab took no action against harassment while Uber immediately did so.
Basically, 2 main factors –
1. Targeted marketing and incentives to capture Malaysian users
2. Lower standards for cars and drivers led to more stable supply of rides
The worst part – a monopoly is the worst thing for consumers.
Monopoly is coming and we all know what’s coming. Price increase.
Go back to using teksi via Dacsee.
I hope uber go with indonesia’s go-jek. In singapore, uber bought by comfort delgro, the taxi company. Not likely for them to go with grab.
I dislike monopoly. More so corporate interference like this purported merger to further their interest.
For Uber, it is best to just copy Grab. Sean Parker of Facebook did say, had MySpace copied whatever Facebook was doing earlier, they would’ve become a formidable competitor to Facebook now.
Uber reignite their drive and motivation like when they were just starting out.
Damn monopolisation! 2 yrs ago Grab was earning RM10 million PER WEEK from the drivers blood, sweat and tears. How rich they wanna get from the drivers blood sweat and tears? All the work is being done by the drivers with their own cars and now has slowly becoming Slaves to the Grind for them! All they do is just supplying the App…
Gomen push for gig economy, be grateful. Kipidap allbGrabUber driver !
It’s a “free market” economy. If the drivers don’t like Grab – DON’T DRIVE FOR GRAB!
Do whatever job they were doing before!
Or it is only as easy as just supplying app – go and start your own app.
GRAB is a loss-making company…and still is….really just depending on funds from investors/suckers
Same with uber.
Kudos to Anthony…the genius…this is wat wr need…tq
The MYCC needs to block this deal. After merge fare prices will go up and no more promo codes.
offer ‘insentive’ to drivers but take away by finding any driver faults, even sometime very weird. allow monopoly but simply saying its ok coz malaysian owners. They only cares about their shares & ipo, not the sweat of grab drivers.