Phnom Penh traffic. Photo credit: PapaBear / 123RF
Grab has made another advance in Southeast Asia with the official launch of its services in Phnom Penh, as the rivalry between the region’s ride-hailing players heats up.
People needing a ride in the Cambodian capital will now be able to use JustGrab, the company’s fixed fare on-demand service. Beginning today, the Grab app is available to download for Android and iOS devices in the country.
Grab has also partnered with Wing Money to provide its drivers in the kingdom with an account for the Cambodian firm’s digital financial services. This looks similar to Grab’s collaboration with Wave Money in Myanmar, which allows drivers to cash out their earnings and passengers to pay for rides using a mobile wallet. Tech in Asia has asked Grab to provide more details.
Rising competition
The battle between Southeast Asia’s three main ride-hailing companies is intensifying, with Google and Temasek last week valuing the industry at US$5.1 billion and expecting it to quadruple within the next eight years.
Uber – which launched in Cambodia in September – has lagged behind homegrown Southeast Asian competitors Grab and Go-Jek. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said he didn’t expect its business in the region to turn a profit anytime soon.
Nevertheless, Uber has sought to increase its local footprint lately, most notably by signing a US$474 million partnership with Singaporean cab firm ComfortDelGro earlier this month. The deal will see ComfortDelGro’s drivers onboarded onto the US company’s app.
Indonesia’s Go-Jek has made a series of acquisitions to support its diversification strategy, as it moves deeper into new service offerings in finance and ecommerce. Last week, it confirmed buyouts of three fintech firms – acquistions that come months after it purchased events ticketing startup Loket in August.
Go-Jek CTO Ajey Gore recently said that the company would launch in the Philippines early next year, marking its first expansion outside its home market. Other Southeast Asian countries are slated to follow later in 2018.
Grab is already dominant in most of those markets.
Like Go-Jek, it has set its sights beyond ride-hailing with its GrabPay digital payments business. It has similarly turned to M&A activity to push this, acquiring online-to-offline sales platform Kudo earlier this year.
Last month, Grab brought cashless QR code payments to Singaporean hawker centers in its first major foray outside the transportation space.
Quality control
As competition in Southeast Asia’s ride-hailing scene grows fiercer, Grab appears keen to broadcast its credentials for regulatory compliance and its track record of cooperation with local authorities and businesses. This is where Uber has tripped up on multiple occasions, while Go-Jek – yet to face the music in other countries as it plots international expansion – has been at the center of controversies at home relating to drivers’ pay and working conditions.
We are appreciative that Grab is a fully compliant company.
According to a press release announcing today’s Phnom Penh launch, Grab is the first ride-hailing company in the world to receive ISO 9001:2015 certification – an internationally agreed-on standard for quality management in operational processes.
The statement said that Grab has also signed a memorandum of understanding with the Cambodian government’s Ministry of Public Works and Transport “to support the kingdom’s infrastructure development.”
Public works and transport minister Sun Chanthol said: “We are appreciative that Grab is a fully compliant company in all the ASEAN markets they operate in, adhering to high ethical standards in making transportation accessible for all and in bringing Southeast Asia into the digital economy.”
Tech in Asia has asked Grab to provide more details on the agreement.
This post Grab enters Cambodia with local partnerships and infrastructure commitment appeared first on Tech in Asia.
from Tech in Asia https://www.techinasia.com/grab-cambodia-entry
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