Kuala Lumpur, 16 February 2017 – Grab, the leading ride-hailing platform in Southeast Asia, today announced the regional launch of GrabShare, the company’s first on-demand commercial carpooling service with its introduction in Malaysia and the Philippines. With GrabShare, passenger demand for rides can be met more efficiently with the existing car supply which helps to play a role in reducing traffic congestion. In return, passengers enjoy cheaper rides with minimal detours, while drivers earn more by completing two bookings in one trip.

“Grab is all about leveraging big data to develop tailored solutions for solving local transport challenges to outserve our consumers. GrabShare gets people to their destinations with a more pocket-friendly fare, while minimising the need for more cars on our roads by tapping on our pool of commercial GrabCar Economy drivers. We are confident GrabShare will enable us to meet Malaysia’s growing passenger demand for ride-hailing especially to cater to first-and-last mile while helping our drivers earn more,” said Sean Goh, Grab Malaysia’s Country Head.

GrabShare pairs just two different passenger bookings with similar trip routes within a single trip. Hence, passengers will only experience a maximum of two stops before reaching their destinations.

For example:

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 up to one more person to ride with them (only four passengers allowed in the car).
4. The order of pick-up and drop-off ensures that both Passenger A and B get to their destinations quickly.

Conceptualised, 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 maximising 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.

“Grab is continually refining our carpooling algorithm to ensure we tailor our GrabShare passenger matchings for a hyperlocal carpooling service, which mirrors the optimal driver and passenger carpooling habits of each city. This is critical for Grab as each of our cities have unique passenger travel patterns and the app is about to customise how bookings are efficiently matched. In a nutshell, the more people use GrabShare, the more robust and efficient the algorithm ultimately becomes,” said Dominic Widdows, Software Engineer for GrabShare.

GrabShare, Carpooling for Malaysia

Although total car sales in Malaysia declined 13 per cent in 2016¹, a 2014 Nielsen study showed Malaysia has the third highest car ownership globally with 93 per cent of Malaysian households owning at least one car and more than half owning multiple cars. This means heavily congested major cities like Kuala Lumpur, with the highest number of registered cars in Malaysia, stands to gain significantly from a carpooling service like GrabShare.

Goh added that the concept of carpooling is not new and has long been promoted by government agencies in Malaysia. However, sustaining carpooling as a behaviour and making it permanent has been a challenge for various reasons.

“We see GrabShare as an opportunity to deliver a viable and hyperlocal carpooling solution by using our expertise and technology in ride-hailing for Malaysia and Southeast Asia,” Goh elaborated.

A Success in Singapore — 2 million GrabShare rides in 2 months
First launched in Singapore in December 2016, GrabShare has been effective in attracting more new riders to the Grab platform. In two months, Grab completed two million GrabShare rides, for a total distance of about 20 million kilometres. Along with the rapid passenger adoption of GrabShare, Grab has seen an improvement in passenger matching rate by 15 per cent.

With more passenger bookings completed, driver monthly incomes have also increased 10 per cent on average. GrabShare’s rapid success in Singapore is instilling Grab’s confidence to extend its commercial carpooling service in more countries.
Why GrabShare

Benefits of GrabShare to passengers include:

1. Cheaper fares

GrabShare fares are priced up to 30 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

In the spirit of sharing, passengers can travel together a friend. To keep the ride comfortable for all, passengers can only bring one other friend per GrabShare booking.

3. Maximum two-stop guarantee

Passengers can expect no more than two stops before reaching their destinations.  This ensures everyone reaches their locations fast for less. 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 socialising with fellow commuters on the ride.

5. Ride with peace of mind

Grab’s Group Personal Accident Insurance covers all passengers in the event of an accident. The total personal accident benefits for the driver or passengers can be up to USD10K per person in Malaysia. (Each incident will be evaluated individually by the insurance providers and coverage amount differs across markets.)

Benefits of GrabShare to drivers include:

1. Higher earnings

Drivers can complete two different passenger bookings in one ride to receive higher combined fares with every GrabShare trip.

2. Similar trip routes

Every GrabShare match is designed to minimise additional distance travelled, reducing fuel consumption and time spent on a GrabShare trip.

Start Sharing Your Ride

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

Step 1: Select the GrabShare option and input booking details before selecting “Book”.	Step 2: Wait for your GrabShare driver at the pick-up location. Drivers will wait up to 3 minutes.	Step 3: Share a ride and enjoy savings! You will be informed when your driver is picking up an additional rider.

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

1 http://paultan.org/2017/01/19/dec-2016-malaysian-car-sales/