Upload a photo to find the right address on Grab

Chenyao Liu, Lead Product Manager, Geo Services; Pimlada Veerapongwattana, Senior Map Operations Manager

. March 12, 2025 . Regional

Here in Southeast Asia, addresses aren’t a straightforward matter. Houses often lack numbers, and when you’re visiting another country, the road names are in a different script—impossible to decipher.

In these situations, it can be challenging to enter the exact pick up or drop off addresses on the Grab app. Manually moving the pin on the map is an option, but not always reliable due to GPS inaccuracies. We’ve all been there! But we desperately want to order a ride or delivery. Now what?

Introducing: Image search

Our team at Grab has been working on a solution. We introduced image search for our map. If you’re unsure about an address, you can now snap a photo of the location, upload it on Grab, and we’ll find the exact address for you.

AI-powered image and image-to-text recognition has made it possible to map photos of places with the corresponding address.

Clear photos of road name signs, landmarks such as bus stops, or shop fronts work best.

Grab users may also upload screenshots of an address, or an address printed on a business card to find the corresponding location. This is especially useful if the address is in another script.

In cases where there’s some uncertainty, Grab will return multiple address options to choose from.

We’ve rolled the image search feature out regionally across Grab markets. Image search can be used for both pick-up and drop-off points.

We continue making the tool more accurate and reliable, by using more powerful AI models, including Large Language Models (LLMs) that help us with nuanced interpretations of text and images (for example, hand-written signs), as well as richer imagery data from map databases and user feedback.

In the future, we also plan to offer image search for indoor places, for example in shopping malls or airports. We strive to make your experience using Grab better each day.

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