Smartphone-based transportation order app Grab is looking to zoom ahead of the competition on the streets of Indonesia with a 50 percent market share in the motorcycle taxi (ojek) segment by the end of the year, through expansion into other cities outside Greater Jakarta
martphone-based transportation order app Grab is looking to zoom ahead of the competition on the streets of Indonesia with a 50 percent market share in the motorcycle taxi (ojek) segment by the end of the year, through expansion into other cities outside Greater Jakarta.
The GrabBike ojek app service is likely to expand into at least five cities by the end of 2016, Grab Indonesia managing director Ridzki Kramadibrata said.
Grab, which has recently rebranded itself from its former name GrabTaxi, is currently still assessing which cities are suitable for the introduction of the GrabBike service.
By focusing on the ojek segment, Ridzki said he believed that Grab's other car-based services would also benefit from the expansion.
'In Indonesia, Grab has seen significant growth rates over the past year alone, for one. As we are in line to secure our place as the Indonesian land-transport hailing app of choice, we feel that this goal we have set can be achieved' he told reporters at Grab's official rebranding event in Jakarta on Wednesday.
Currently, the GrabBike service is only available in the Greater Jakarta area, while it's other services including GrabCar and GrabTaxi are available in other cities. GrabCar is available in Denpasar and Jakarta while GrabTaxi is available in Surabaya, Jakarta, Padang and Bandung.
Ridzki noted that Indonesia, as the Malaysian-born app's largest market, greatly contributed to its overall Southeast Asian growth numbers between 2014 and 2015.
Along with other markets such as Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam, the app's GrabBike service grew by 75 percent while its GrabCar service grew by 35 percent within that period in the region.
GrabBike only entered the Indonesian market in May 2015.
Around 11 million app downloads have been recorded for Grab, with a active user base of 1.5 million orders per day in the region.
Having recently rebranded itself, Grab Indonesia country director of marketing Kiki Rizki explained that the company's numerous changes were in line its ambition to further its operations in the transport sector.
Some notable changes to Grab include the addition of new features such as GrabWork and GrabPay.
GrabWork, explains Kiki, will help users using hire professional or business services to automatically record travel expenses so that they can be noted for office reimbursement purposes.
Meanwhile, GrabPay is the app's 'effort to introduce an e-payment scheme in the mobile transport sector' that would allow its users to select any method of payment for the service.
Other features, such as live driver tracking, were also upgraded.
'Aside from the new features, we have improved our user-experience services to make it easier and more personalized for users. By making it more personalized, we will be able to become the safest land transport app in the country,' Kiki said.
Grab had been named GrabTaxi since its inception in 2011 until the rebranding, and is currently operating in 28 cities across six Southeast Asian nations.
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