Splyt investment shows Grab doubling down on travel, but revenue model is uncertain

Grab’s investment in UK “mobility roaming” startup Splyt, announced last week, may be one of the most important components yet to the Singapore-based company’s “superapp” strategy.

It’s another indication that Singapore-based Grab sees travel and tourism among its best prospects for user growth – not just in terms of transportation, but also its payments business.

The enhanced partnership with Splyt will allow Grab to tap into a new user base outside of Southeast Asia for the first time, albeit indirectly.

But, as with other segments where Grab is competing, it isn’t clear how the introduction of these features can propel it towards profitability.

Enhanced partnership

Grab and Splyt were already partners prior to last week’s investment.

The ride-hailing startup is the only publicly disclosed investor in Splyt’s US$8 million series A round so far. Mark Porter, Grab’s chief technology officer for transport, is joining the London startup’s board of directors.

Splyt initially launched in 2015 as an on-demand carpooling app. Due to regulatory difficulties, it shifted to a business-to-business model and began selling its tech on a white-label basis to taxi companies and ride-hailing firms around the world.

Mark Porter, CTO for transport, Grab / Photo credit: Grab

By 2017, Splyt was focused on “mobility roaming,” enabling customers of local online transportation services to seamlessly access similar services from different providers while overseas. Their application programming interface allowed third-party operators to fulfill ride requests from users of apps that weren’t present in their markets in either geographic or sector terms.

It also gives non-transportation platforms the ability to offer transport options to their users.

Thanks to Splyt’s technology, Alipay and Ctrip users visiting from outside Southeast Asia can access Grab’s services via those two mobile apps without the need to download the Grab app. This also means they can avail of Grab’s transport services through a familiar interface in their own language, collect rewards points through their existing loyalty memberships, and pay in their home currency without conversion-related losses.

Incoming and outgoing

A Grab spokesperson told Tech in Asia that the strategic alliance with Splyt has two phases.

The first is intended to enable visitors from outside of Southeast Asia to use Grab’s transport services while they’re in the region.

The phase will also include further integration by the end of 2019 with Booking.com, part of the Booking group of hotel reservation sites that invested US$200 million in Grab late last year.

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