• Carpool service for more affordable rides, up to 50% lower than GrabCar Economy fares

• GrabShare pairs just two passenger bookings with similar trip routes and only allowing a maximum number of four passengers within a single trip

• GrabShare brings more affordable fares to passengers, higher incomes for drivers and less traffic congestion

Medan, 9 August 2017 – After being introduced in Jakarta, Grab, Southeast Asia’s leading ride-hailing and mobile payments platform, today presented its commercial carpool service, GrabShare in Medan, North Sumatra. With GrabShare, people in Medan now can enjoy more convenient rides with more affordable fares, while driver partners earn more from completing two passengers’ bookings in one trip. GrabShare becomes Grab’s fifth transportation option available in Medan, completing GrabCar (car-hailing), GrabBike (bike-hailing), GrabTaxi (taxi-hailing) and GrabExpress (courier-hailing).

“After receiving a very warm welcome from Grab users in Jakarta since March 2017, we see an opportunity to improve daily commute and traffic congestion in Medan, the biggest metropolitan city outside Java with undeniable congestion. GrabShare is available here to reduce the number of lone commuters where massive number of cars is often on the roads around Medan with single occupancy. With this new service, we want to optimize the use of cars to alleviate the congestion as well as serve local people’s transportation needs with a more innovative and beneficial service,” explained Mediko Azwar, Marketing Director Grab Indonesia.

To get passengers quickly to their destinations, GrabShare pairs just two passenger bookings with similar trip routes and only allowing a maximum number of four passengers within a single trip for greater convenience. Passengers will only experience a maximum of two stops before reaching their destinations. For example, if passenger A commences the ride and is paired with passenger B, depending on the more efficient trip route, passenger A may make a first stop to pick-up passenger B and a second to drop-off passenger B.

Conceptualized, designed and engineered across Grab’s three research and development centres in Singapore, Seattle and Beijing, GrabShare’s matching algorithm ensures passengers get to their destinations in the shortest possible time. The algorithm calculates and determines a match by factoring the closest available drivers, travel time, overlap of trip routes, detour distance and current traffic conditions before intuitively sequencing pick-ups and drop-offs. For drivers, GrabShare focuses on maximizing potential earnings by reducing the time and distance spent on a single GrabShare ride, enabling drivers to complete more jobs per hour to boost their incomes and reduce fuel consumption.

GrabShare, Carpooling Innovation for Local People

The GrabShare service taps on Grab’s pool of commercial GrabCar Economy drivers to serve the country’s growing demand for point-to-point transportation. Benefits of GrabShare to passengers include:

1. Cheaper fares: GrabShare fares are priced up to 50 percent cheaper than GrabCar Economy fares. Fares are fixed and displayed upfront. With Grab’s dynamic pricing model that balances supply and demand, passengers enjoy cheaper rides during non-peak hours when more available drivers are on the road.
2. Ride with a friend at no additional cost: GrabShare users can bring another friend on their rides at no additional cost, as long as both share the same pick-up and drop-off locations. To keep the ride comfortable for all, passengers can only bring one other friend per GrabShare booking.
3. Maximum two-stop and two-passenger in one booking guarantee: Passengers can expect no more than two stops before reaching their destinations and two passengers in each booking. This ensures everyone reaches their locations fast for less and greater convenience with maximum four passengers in a car. Drivers will wait up to three minutes for each passenger at pick-ups.
4. Instant booking: Passengers can book a GrabShare ride on-demand from anywhere, at any time and enjoy socializing with fellow commuters on the ride.
5. Ride with peace of mind: Grab’s Group Personal Accident Insurance covers all drivers and passengers in the event of an accident.

Benefits of GrabShare to drivers include:

1. Higher earnings: Drivers can complete two passenger bookings at once to receive higher combined fares with every GrabShare trip.
2. Similar trip routes: Every GrabShare match is designed to minimize additional distance travelled, reducing fuel consumption and time spent on a GrabShare trip.

“In line with our mission, the launch of GrabShare is expected to be able to concretely contribute in presenting a safe, convenient, and more affordable transportation solution to local people in Medan and its surrounding areas. GrabShare also enables drivers to serve more passengers especially during peak hours when demand can be three times higher than usual,” said Mediko.

Three Simple Steps to Book GrabShare

Grab passengers can start sharing their rides with GrabShare by following three simple steps:

How GrabShare works

1. Passenger A selects GrabShare ride and is picked up by a GrabShare driver.
2. Passenger B selects GrabShare ride, and passenger A and B are matched. The Grab app notifies both the driver and passenger A and B of a successful match.
3. Driver makes a slight detour to pick up passenger B. Both passenger A and B can bring one other person to ride with them (for example, four seats in the car may be filled).
4. The order of pick-up and drop-off ensures that both passenger A and B get to their destinations quickly.

Download the Grab app today from the App Store and Google Play to experience GrabShare. For more information, please visit https://www.grab.com/id/share/.

About Grab

Grab is Southeast Asia’s leading on-demand transportation and mobile payments platform. Grab solves critical transportation challenges to make transport freedom a reality for 620 million people in Southeast Asia. Grab’s core product platform includes transport solutions for drivers and passengers with an emphasis on convenience, safety and reliability, as well as its proprietary mobile payments platform, GrabPay, which is increasing access to mobile payment solutions for millions of Grab riders and drivers across Southeast Asia and deepening financial inclusion in the region. In Indonesia, Grab’s network of 500,000 agents is helping the unbanked and underbanked utilize GrabPay’s platform to participate in the digital revolution. Grab currently offers services in 65 cities across Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Myanmar. For more information, please visit: http://www.grab.com.