BANGKOK, 21 June 2017 – Grab, Southeast Asia’s leading technology company, celebrated its fifth anniversary in Thailand by committing to support the Thailand 4.0 national agenda through pursuing technological innovations in transport and mobile payments to further improve people’s everyday lives. To demonstrate its commitment to bringing the digital economy to all Thais, Grab announced its new city expansion into Nakhon Ratchasima (Korat) and Udon Thani, the country’s first JustGrab service as well as providing updates on the introduction of All Thai Taxi and Chiang Mai’s RedTruck on its app.

To commemorate the milestone, Grab released the ‘Moving SEA Together’ report which highlights the company’s tremendous growth and impact on lives across the region. The Grab app has been downloaded onto over 45 million devices, triple the number from June last year. It now has more than 930,000 driver-partners on its platform completing up to 2.5 million rides daily across seven countries. Closer to home, Grab demonstrated its local ride-hailing leadership by helping Thai driver-partners earn 19 per cent more than the average local wage while reducing travel time to passengers by 20 per cent. More importantly, Grab’s consistent focus on safety has resulted in delivering a traffic accident rate that is five times lower than Thailand’s national average. These factors have encouraged more drivers to join Grab — the company has expanded its local driver fleet by 226 per cent year-on-year since its entry into Thailand late in 2013.

“As a socially minded business founded five years ago on providing safe and accessible rides to people while ensuring we improve the lives of our driver-partners, we take pride in redefining ride-hailing with an entire shared mobility ecosystem across motorbikes, taxis and cars to benefit everyone. Grab is Southeast Asia’s largest homegrown technology company and locally incorporated: we want to do our part for Thailand 4.0. Ensuring Thailand builds strength from within will require close public-private collaboration between government agencies and businesses to bring the benefits of the digital economy to all Thais, who can then connect Thailand to the world,” said Yee Wee Tang, Head of Grab Thailand.

To support Thailand 4.0, Grab is building a consumer platform focused on improving everyday services in transport and mobile payments and providing access to the digital economy.  

Improving Lives with Transport and Mobile Payments

New Cities: Grab is providing Thais and foreign visitors an easy, safe and affordable way to access transport services with one app across all its locations in Southeast Asia — one in five active users use Grab in more than one city. To bring ride-hailing to more people and locations, Grab is expanding into Nakhon Ratchasima (Korat) and Udon Thani this week. This takes Grab to nine locations in Thailand, up from five locations a year ago, and now 57 cities around Southeast Asia.

JustGrab: Grab is introducing its new JustGrab service in Thailand for the first time for Nakhon Ratchasima (Korat), Udon Thani and Ubon Ratchathani, bringing together fixed fare GrabTaxi and GrabCar vehicles to form a bigger supply of on-demand cars in a city. Access to a larger vehicle supply provides passengers with shorter waiting times and price transparency with a common fixed fare, subject to dynamic pricing. First piloted in Singapore three months ago, JustGrab has been well-received by passengers and drivers alike for its simplicity, faster journeys and upfront fare pricing that is displayed on the app before a booking is made.

All Thai Taxi: To better meet passenger demand, Grab is partnering with All Thai Taxi to integrate a part of its Bangkok fleet with its Grab service. Adding All Thai Taxi to the pool of available drivers improves booking allocations for faster on-demand rides. Passengers can choose to make cashless payments with All Thai Taxi rides using GrabPay for a more seamless ride experience when the integration is complete in about a month’s time.  

Providing Access to the Digital Economy

GrabBike Win: Providing access to the Grab platform to GrabBike Win has improved digital literacy amongst GrabBike Win drivers with 25 per cent higher incomes and greater work productivity. Since bringing this service ‘online’ with the official launch in Bangkok in April this year, the GrabBike Win driver-partner network has doubled in just a month underscoring the benefit it is bringing to this traditional transport fleet.      

Grab RedTruck: Grab is now taking a similar approach to bridging the digital divide with Chiang Mai’s iconic RedTrucks. Working with Chiang Mai University on a city development project with the Chiang Mai Provincial Government Offices and the Provincial Land Transport Office to digitise transport and enhance urban development, Grab RedTruck will be piloted as an on-demand ride service on the Grab app next month for transporting up to nine passengers per vehicle. Grab’s newest hyperlocal transport service is intended to provide ride-hailing technology to enhance local livelihoods. It is also a demonstration of the benefits to society through mutual cooperation achieved between government and businesses.

GrabPay: To support Thailand’s transformation into a cashless society in response to the National e-Payment strategy, Grab has been steadily expanding local partners and promoting GrabPay for cashless payments by passengers. GrabPay currently accepts debit and credit cards as well as Alipay in Thailand. For consistency and provide easy accessibility to mobile payments, all new services including Grab RedTruck will be enabled for GrabPay.