Kuala Lumpur, Feb 17 – Grab, the leading ride-hailing platform in Southeast Asia, today announced the regional launch of GrabShare, the company’s first on-demand commercial carpooling service with its introduction in Malaysia and the Philippines.
With GrabShare, passenger demand for rides can be met more efficiently with the existing car supply which helps to play a role in reducing traffic congestion. In return, passengers enjoy cheaper rides with minimal detours, while drivers earn more by completing two bookings in one trip.
“Grab is all about leveraging big data to develop tailored solutions for solving local transport challenges to outserve our customers. GrabShare gets people to their destinations with a more pocket-friendly fare, while minimising the need for more cars on our roads by tapping on our pool of commercial GrabCar Economy drivers. We are confident GrabShare will enable us to meet Malaysia’s growing passenger demand for ride-hailing especially to cater to first-and-last mile while helping our drivers earn more,” says Sean Goh, Grab Malaysia’s Country Head.
GrabShare pairs just two different passenger bookings with similar trip routes within a single trip. Hence, passengers will only experience a maximum of two stops before reaching their destinations.
For 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.
Conceptualised, designed and engineered across Grab’s three research and development centres in Singapore, Seattle and Beijing, GrabShare’s matching algorithm ensures passengers get to their destinations in the shortest possible time.
The algorithm calculates and determines a match by factoring the closest available drivers, travel time, overlap of trip routes, detour distance and current traffic conditions before intuitively sequencing pick-ups and drop-offs.
For drivers, GrabShare focuses on maximising potential earnings by reducing the time and distance spent on a single GrabShare ride, enabling drivers to complete more jobs per hour to boost their incomes and reduce fuel consumption.
“Grab is continually refining our carpooling algorithm to ensure we tailor our GrabShare passenger matchings for a hyperlocal carpooling service, which mirrors the optimal driver and passenger carpooling habits of each city. This is critical for Grab as each of our cities have unique passenger travel patterns and the app is about to customise how bookings are efficiently matched. In a nutshell, the more people use GrabShare, the more robust and efficient the algorithm ultimately becomes,” says Dominic Widdows, Software Engineer for GrabShare.
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Step 1: Select the GrabShare option and input booking details before selecting “Book”. |
Step 2: Wait for your GrabShare driver at the pick-up location. Drivers will wait up to 3 minutes. |
Step 3: Share a ride and enjoy savings! You will be informed when your driver is picking up an additional rider. |