Top-dog ride-hailing service in Southeast Asia, Grab, is announcing yet another product today. GrabShare is Grab’s first on-demand commercial carpooling service in Malaysia and the Philippines.
With GrabShare, passengers enjoy 30% cheaper rides compared to regular GrabCar Economy fares. For drivers, it means earning more by completing two booking at a go.
GrabShare pairs two different passenger booking with similar trip routes into a single trip. Passengers will therefore experience a maximum of two stops before reaching their destinations.
As an example:
- Passenger A selects GrabShare ride and is picked up by a GrabShare driver.
- 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.
- 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).
- The order of pick-up and drop-off ensures that both Passenger A and B get to their destinations quickly.
The feature uses a matching algorithm that ensures passengers get to their destinations in the shortest possible time. It determines a match based on the closest available drivers, travel time, overlap of trip routes, detour distance and current traffic conditions. It sequences pick-ups and drop-offs.
GrabShare was conceptualised, designed and engineered across Grab’s three R&D centres in Singapore, Seattle and Beijing.
Carpooling isn’t an entirely new idea, having existed amongst drivers, and even taxi services and private cars. It has also been long promoted by government agencies. However, it’s the first time it’s systematically, automatically and legitimately done to benefit both drivers and riders.
For drivers, it’s an opportunity to maximise potential earnings by reducing time and distance spent on a single ride. It lets drivers complete more jobs per hour to boost potential income, as well as reduce fuel consumption and costs.
Grab hopes to emulate the success of GrabShare in Singapore. Launched in December 2016, GrabShare in Singapore saw the completion of two million rides, for a total distance of 20 million kilometres.
More passenger bookings translated to increased monthly incomes for drivers – an average increase of 10%.
With Malaysia having the third highest car ownership globally with 93% of households owning at least one car, heavily congested cities like Kuala Lumpur stand to gain from carpooling.
Here’s how it works.
If you haven’t tried Grab before, all you need to do is download the app from the Apple App Store or Google Play. Head over to www.grab.com/my/share to learn more about GrabShare.
So what do you think about carpooling and GrabShare?
