Grab, a leading superapp in Southeast Asia, has released its ESG Report 2023, providing an overview of its performance in creating business sustainability across the region in the past year. The report focuses on three key areas: making a positive social impact by creating income opportunities and enhancing the quality of people’s lives; protecting the environment; and fostering sustainable practices while integrating ESG into business strategy for long-term value creation. Key highlights from 2023 include enabling driver- and merchant-partners to earn over USD 11 billion, disbursing loans worth over USD 1.5 billion, reducing 71,000 tCO2e, and cutting single-use plastic by 7,365 tonnes.

Worachat Luxkanalode, Country Head of Grab Thailand, stated, “Grab’s platform has significantly impacted people’s lives in Southeast Asia, including Thailand, with over 35.5 million transacting users and 13 million registered partners and Kios agents. We recognize that Grab is no longer just an application that makes lives more convenient but also a force for positive societal and environmental change. That’s why we are committed to continuously developing our platform to improve the user experience while growing the business sustainably in three key areas: creating social impact by generating income opportunities within our ecosystem, protecting the environment by leveraging technology to mitigate environmental impacts, and promoting sustainable governance. These initiatives align with our ‘GrabForGood’ mission, a core principle since we started the business.”

Key Highlights of Grab’s ESG Report 2023 include

Creating Positive Social Impact:

• Driver- and merchant-partners altogether earned more than USD 11 billion (or approximately THB 407 billion) on the Grab platform, with driver-partners’ earnings per transit hour growing by 9% year-on-year.
• Grab provided financial inclusion for driver- and merchant-partners through loan disbursals worth over USD 1.5 billion (or approximately THB 55 billion), which increased by 57% year-on-year, with over one-third of active driver-partners taking up a loan.
• Grab partnered with government and private sectors to upskill its driver-partners, rolling out various courses including financial literacy, digital marketing, basic language courses such as English and Chinese,  and Electric Vehicles 101, with more than 1.2 million driver-partners taking an online course on GrabAcademy in 2023.
• Grab raised the bar on its safety, with 99.99% of all the rides continuing to occur without any safety incidents, in spite of the total number of rides from both mobility and delivery increasing by 11%.

Protecting the Environment:

• Grab reduced 71,000 tCO2e  by supporting driver-partners’ transition to low or zero emission transport options.
• Grab planted more than 280,000 trees through contributions from the platform’s carbon offset toggle, which fractionalizes the cost of carbon credits based on the proportion of emissions from rides and deliveries.
• Grab lowered the number of plastic cutlery by 817 million sets and reduced single-use plastic by 7,365 tonnes through the platform’s in-app cutlery opt-out option and the use of recyclable packaging.

“Grab Thailand remains steadfast in its commitment to the GrabForGood mission. In addition to adapting our business strategies to meet evolving consumer behaviors post-COVID-19, we have continued to create opportunities for Thais to earn a livelihood on our platform. We have also prioritized serving underserved communities by providing loans to over 100,000 driver- and merchant-partners in the past year. On the environmental front, we actively promoted the use of electric vehicles among our driver- and delivery-partners through the Grab EV programme. Concurrently, we have sustained our Carbon Offset initiative, utilizing donations from our users to purchase carbon credits and plant more than 150,000 trees,” added Worachat.

Additionally, in celebration of World Environment Day, Grab Thailand, in partnership with the TerraCycle Thai Foundation, recently organized a Canal Clean-Up activity. The one-day event encouraged employees to collect waste from the Lat Phrao Canal and participate in a workshop to enhance their understanding of proper waste management and sorting. A total of 1.3 tons of waste was collected and processed for recycling.