Inside Grab’s early, not-so-glamorous days

Behind each successful startup lies a humble story.

A recent edition of Startup Grind featured Kell Jay Lim, Grab’s country head for Singapore. He spoke about why he left his high-flying career for a startup whose success was unimaginable in the earliest days, and about what’s next in the autonomous vehicle market.

Anthony said he was going to “build the next billion-dollar company.”

What convinced Kell Jay to take a leap of faith and abandon his job of 9 years at a reputable consulting firm? He said that when he met Anthony – the CEO & Co-founder of Grab – Anthony said he was going to “build the next billion-dollar company.” It helped that the timing was right and that he was ready to move on to a new area.

Armed with just the Grab app and their passion, Kell Jay and his team conquered taxi lines at Changi.

Kell Jay stuck with Grab through thick and thin while he set up its Singapore operations as its country head. He described those early days as the “scrappy-as-hell beginnings.” Armed with just the Grab app and their passion, Kell Jay and his team conquered the taxi lines at Changi. The race starts at the very end of the line: once the driver consents, the team hops into the taxis and makes a 3-5 minute pitch about the Grab app before they get to the front of the line. The selling point: a preloaded app with $30 worth of credit, hundreds of jobs, and zero risks. They just needed the taxi drivers to try it out and hopefully fall in love.

The number that everyone dialed to get a taxi was the Comfort taxi hotline number. Grab noticed that 90 percent of these calls are directed to the call center; often, many are put on hold for up to 15 minutes and are unable to get a cab. There was a glaring pain point to solve – and Grab saw an opportunity.

“Paying on time matters so much to the taxi drivers.”

Grab’s initial competitor was the present incumbent, EZ Taxi. But Grab always paid drivers on time: this made other competitors pale in comparison. This garnered trust and loyalty among cab drivers; becoming Grabcar drivers seemed increasingly like an attractive choice.

Back in the old days, funds did not come in time; Grab did not have money to pay its drivers. Kell Jay understood how important timely payments were to taxi drivers: he bore the risk and emptied his entire bank savings just to pay the drivers on time, Kell Jay said.

Grab boss Antony Tan is overseeing the startup’s bloody battle against Uber. Photo credit: Grab.

One of Grab’s biggest failures – and a major learning point – was the breakdown of servers a year and a half into operations. The shutdown lasted for a few hours and affected operations across 6 countries. As a result of the nightmare, drivers were manually assigned to customers while the engineering team worked to solve the problem. This incident served as a huge trigger to revamp the entire booking system. Today, Grab has achieved an uptime of 99.9 percent.

As Grab works towards building brand loyalty and being the ultimate ride-hailing platform, ensuring safety and quality of service was imperative. To ensure the reliability and safety of Grabcar services, Kell Jay made the decision not to move the entire process for driver sign-ups online. It was critical to meet drivers personally and perform vehicle checks so as to ensure quality and safety.

Selling cars, using Grab instead

“I have absolutely no regrets. I gave myself 12 months to see where this was going, and I am loving what I am doing,” Kell Jay said. He describes his early days working in Grab as being “10 percent prepared, 90 percent unprepared.” In his previous role, it took a year to launch a campaign for a client. At Grab, conceptualization to actualization took only 3 days. He sees the success of Grab when he can finally convince his wife “to sell the car and rely on Grab services to get anywhere, safely and on time.”