Grabbing more or the future evolution of ride sharing services

Coming back to this page after a long absence mainly due to other priorities and procrastination, to be honest.

I am jumping right into it by following up on my last post about GrabTaxi. As of a few weeks ago it is now Grab. This comes with a new graphic identity, a new logo, a new transit campaign, international agreements and many new services.

Based on the picture you can see they went big and were (and still are) all over the place in Singapore. 

New services (GrabCar - in 4 flavours -, GrabHitch, Limo Taxi) on top the legacy taxis and certainly more to come outside of the world of transportation. Why? The change in name calls for the ability to call on the service to literally "grab" anything one would want: food, general order delivery, and why not payment like successful Chinese social services? Future will tell but I am not the only thinking about it.

China & the rest of the world are actually very much top of mind following the announcement of a cross partnership with Lyft (itself $500M richer following investment by GM), Didi Kuaidi of China and Ola from India. Using one's favorite app is really a good thing for users as they don't need to learn a new UX or language. But looking at the backers of these companies, there may be more at work: Softbank backs all of them, even Lyft via its investment in Alibaba. The cut throat competition will call for consolidation amongst all the players and money will be made in the backend as well as with additional services. Otherwise there is going to be blood, like in the US this past January.

This will be a short post and before my last comment I want to point to a link towards a re/code decode podcast featuring the president of Lyft, John Zimmer, who talks about the company, the recent investment from GM and the future. One interesting thought was about the real turning point for ride sharing apps: a 3-minute ETA anywhere in a market would make them a good alternative to other modes of transportation. How would that change our habits? Would that still provide ride sharing app drivers with living wage? Those are questions up for debate but very real.

And I will leave with a geeky picture of my early morning ride to the airport this week when, to my surprise, a Tesla S picked me up. What a great car, and that screen!

The Uber-killer from Asia you never heard of

Since moving to Singapore 8 months ago, I have started taking more taxis for work meetings or simply make up for late starts. Given the size of the city, taxis are everywhere but horribly difficult to get during peak hours. Traditional booking services provided by taxi companies are unreliable at best. So there was a spot to take to make up for the abysmal service consumers where getting. Comes in GrabTaxi, the Malaysia-born booking app. They started by solving the same issue in Kuala Lumpur and naturally made their way to Singapore and the rest of the region. You can find details of their start with this article from Tech In Asia.

What made think that they have an edge versus Uber, Hailo and others is the way they are running their business. First, they are positioning themselves as a support for taxi drivers because they have understood that they are the best salespeople they can dream of. Driver have an obvious interest in the app being successful and won't go up in arms against it, the way they went against Uber which tried to bypass them. It is a really smart approach, though obvious in hindsight. Also, by doing that, they are taking a page from Charles Branson's Virgin philosophy (I am paraphrasing): treating your employee well motivates them and in return they are providing great products and services to your customers, making the company successful. If taxi drivers can get additional business (more rides), they will make sure the app is successful by providing great service to passengers. So GrabTaxi is treating taxi drivers really well, listening to them, helping them getting smartphones, welfare, keeping them updated on what comes next. They even regularly gather them for drinks to hear firsthand what they think and how they should improve the service. At the same time they will cut off bad drivers (ie rated poorly repeatedly) without a second thought. I heard this first hand from several taxi drivers themselves who are rooting for the service and making their outmost to be nice and asking for ratings. They got what was there for them and are making sure to get the best out of it. 

Sure, all taxi drivers are not perfect but by boosting the best, they are progressively changing the landscape and making trips much more enjoyable for riders.

As a user, I am impressed by the always evolving app, the precisions of it (compared to Uber) and the service I am receiving. In Thailand it has proven really useful to grab the taxi I needed without speaking any Thai. And the latest addition, Grabpay (basically paying by pre-registered credit card a-la-Uber) is very useful and appreciated by drivers, as they don't pay any commission like other booking services 

Finally, GrabTaxi is low key, humble, developing quickly without pushing too hard, the anti-thesis to Uber. And it is working perfectly well in South East Asia, having been born here and understanding the various traditions and business manners.

All of this, the focus on drivers, the humble approach, the level of service and constant innovation make me think they have a shot at overshadowing the competition in this part of the world. What do you think?