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GrabTaxi to launch services in Jakarta
Aiming to replicate similar success in Bali, taxi-booking startup GrabTaxi will soon launch its ride-booking service, GrabCar, for the Jakarta area to tap into rising middle-class consumers in the city who demand a comfortable yet affordable car-riding service
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iming to replicate similar success in Bali, taxi-booking startup GrabTaxi will soon launch its ride-booking service, GrabCar, for the Jakarta area to tap into rising middle-class consumers in the city who demand a comfortable yet affordable car-riding service.
GrabTaxi's head of country marketing for Indonesia Kiki Rizki said that the GrabCar service for the Jakarta area would be this the same as that in Bali and that her firm expected similar growth as to what had been recorded far.
'Normally, we see at least 10 percent growth per week [in terms of user traffic] for both our existing GrabTaxi and GrabCar services,' she told reporters on Friday.
Kiki said that GrabCar in Jakarta would be rolled out on Aug. 10 by offering customers free rides using some vintage and rental cars.
The free ride promo is expected to last until the end of the month for certain routes within the city.
'After doing so, we'll apply certain fares for the service in Jakarta,' Kiki said, adding that her firm would fully comply with existing regulations.
In Bali, GrabCar is offered with a flag-fall rate at Rp 7,000 (52 US cents) and a rate of Rp 4,500 per kilometer.
Kiki refused to disclose the exact number of GrabCar service users in Bali, only saying that the market worked in her firm's favor.
She added that her firm would partner with the Indonesian Car Rental Businessmen Association (PPRI) and licensed car rental companies in operating the service in Jakarta.
The presence of GrabTaxi's GrabCar service in Jakarta could pose a heated competition between it and Uber, which is a global ride-booking startup that also operates in the city.
With the new car service addition, GrabTaxi currently runs three different services in the country, taxi-booking GrabTaxi, motorcycle taxi-booking GrabBike and ride-booking GrabCar.
The startup, which operates in the country through PT Grab Taxi Indonesia, currently has a presence in Jakarta, Padang, Surabaya and Bali, with distinct offers in each province.
GrabTaxi was initially launched in 2012 in Malaysia as MyTeksi by two Harvard Business School graduates.
The startup has so far partnered with 11,100 drivers in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines, with over 6.1 million app downloads on mobile devices across the countries.
The company has pocketed a total of US$340 million in investment funds from a number of investors, including SoftBank Corp., Tiger Global Management and Hillhouse Capital Management.
Given Indonesia's huge population, which accounts for around 40 percent of Southeast Asia's total population, Kiki said that GrabTaxi poured a big chunk of the funding into Indonesia's market.
The company announced earlier that it would gradually invest US$100 million of the obtained funding for its regional research and development center based in Singapore.
