Grab gets into coach booking for groups of passengers

Photo credit: taina / 123RF.

Southeast Asian ride-hailing app Grab now lets you hail quite a big ride. The transportation startup is rolling out GrabCoach, a service for booking large passenger vehicles, from 13-seat all the way up to 40-seat coaches.

The service is aimed at group transportation and corporate customers. Grab says there is already a fleet of 200 vehicles available to Grab app users. Prices are fixed for a one-way trip at US$46 for 13-seaters, US$67 for 23-seaters, and US$106 for 40-seaters. Passengers can book on-demand or up to seven days ahead.

The service is currently available in Singapore and can’t be used for cross-border trips.

Grab’s messaging and payment functions are used in the same way as booking a taxi or a private-hire car through the app. GrabCoach also accepts cash. The feature can be useful for passenger fleet owners and operators who don’t have their own online booking and payment systems in place.

The company seems to be taking a page out of Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing’s playbook. Didi launched a bus-hailing service in October 2015.

Grab recently launched GrabShare, a car-pooling service similar to UberPool. Last week, it announced it would pour US$700 million into research and development in Indonesia.

Converted from Singapore dollars. US$1 = S$1.41