Indonesia becomes Grab’s biggest market as car, motorcycle services grow 250-fold

Photo credit: Grab

Ride-hailing app Grab today claims it’s making headway in Indonesia, where it’s facing stiff competition from rival apps.

In a statement, the Singapore-headquartered company says Indonesia has become its largest market in terms of completed rides in Southeast Asia.

That’s thanks to its GrabCar and GrabBike services, which both grew 250 times in the first half of 2016 from the year before.

It says GrabBike alone has grown 300 percent since the start of this year, despite a 50 percent reduction in fare subsidies.

Those growth figures look stellar, but they could be coming off a low base. We emailed Grab for hard numbers, but it refused to disclose any.

In Indonesia, Grab has zeroed in on Jakarta, which is home to more than 30 million people. It expects to expand to eight more mega cities, spanning a population of 38 million.

Grab claims to have recorded over 17 million app downloads and 320,000 drivers in 30 cities across Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam as of end-June.

The company offers taxi rides – its flagship service, private car (GrabCar), two-wheeler (GrabBike), and delivery (GrabExpress). It’s testing new services such as carpooling and food delivery.

The company’s backed by investors like Didi Kuaidi, China’s largest ride app, and SoftBank. Recently, Tech in Asia found that one of Indonesia’s largest conglomerates, Lippo Group, is also an investor of Grab. The two have a strategic partnership where Grab provides logistics services to ecommerce company MatahariMall, one of Lippo’s investments.

Grab fiercely competes with Indonesia’s homegrown motorcycle ride-hailing startup Go-Jek and US-based Uber, which has resulted in low fares and a frenzy of promos.

Go-Jek announced at the Tech in Asia Bangalore 2016 that its bookings have grown a hundred times over the past year, although it didn’t divulge any absolute numbers as well.

We’ve reached out to Go-Jek for updates about its own completed rides, and we’ll update this article when we hear back.

See: Go-Jek saw bookings explode 100-fold last year