Driving within zones to earn more

Grab Editorial

. May 29, 2023

We’re constantly looking for ways to make our platform more efficient. To increase productivity and help driver-partners earn more on Grab, we introduced a programme which allows driver-partners to select a zone to work in for a fixed period of time.

This programme is available across our businesses including GrabFood, GrabMart and transport for qualifying full-time driver- and delivery-partners.

By committing to a session, driver-partners will only receive jobs within a predefined geographical zone. In Singapore, for example, there are eight zones that Grab transport drivers-partners can pick from. In Thailand, there are three zones in Chanthaburi city and 10 zones in Bangkok for delivery-partners to work within.

To enjoy the perks of working within zones, driver-partners need to stay online for a minimum of three to five hours and auto-accept jobs coming in.

This helps us ensure that there are enough driver-partners in areas with high demand to accept orders. The geographical boundary also means that trip distances are shorter, allowing driver-partners to complete more trips per online hour to boost their earnings.

The introduction of such sessions led to a 20 per cent increase in the number of trips completed by driver-partners while trimming the distance travelled for each trip by 10 per cent, according to findings from an experiment conducted in Thailand’s Chanthaburi city between May to June last year.

How zones are designed

Our zone boundaries and sizes are designed to reflect factors such as demand pattern and density, and are aligned with road networks in order to be more intuitive for driver-partners to understand.

Zones are also designed to help driver-partners receive a steady flow of jobs. We ensure there is a good density of merchants, consumers and passengers in each zone.

Designing zones involves grouping similar pick-up and drop-off points.

We group these points based on their distance from one another and can be put in a bigger cluster together if they cover a similar area. With slight overlaps between zones, a single point could appear in more than one cluster.

We’re working on having zones being divided based on real life road networks. This ensures that physical landscapes or terrains that are difficult to access will not get in the way of driver-partners working within zones.

Here’s an example of our map mesh over Singapore’s road network.

The result is a polygon that mirrors our real-life roads, and we’re excited to have this technology help us scale and expand jobs in designated zones across the region.