Grab to fully have own mapping tech by third quarter

  • Aims to tap into a US$1 bil market opportunity per year in SEA
  • Claims to have 4x lower error rate, 10x lower latency over competitors

Grab to fully have own mapping tech by third quarter

Grab Holdings Ltd (Grab) has announced the launch of GrabMaps, a new enterprise service that will allow the company to tap into the US$1 billion (RM4.3 billion) market opportunity in Southeast Asia per year for mapping and location-based services. 

In a statement, the company said GrabMaps, which was first developed for in-house use, was created to address Grab’s need for a more hyperlocal solution to power its services.

GrabMaps provides location-based intelligence and services to all its verticals in seven out of the eight countries it operates in, and it expects to be fully self-sufficient with GrabMaps by Q3 2022, Grab said.

Tan Hooi Ling, co-founder, Grab, said the company has always sought to build innovative tech that addresses Southeast Asia’s hyperlocal needs and GrabMaps is a great example of that. 

“The back alleys and narrow side streets common across Southeast Asia cities often don’t show up on conventional maps, but are navigated by our driver and delivery partners every day,” she added. 

“We’ve invested to turn this intelligence into a competitive advantage, allowing us to serve our users and partners with a great experience, at the same time driving efficiency and cost-savings for the business,” said Tan.

She said the company will soon be fully self-powered by its own mapping and location-based technology and commercialising this technology is another step forward for our young but fast-growing enterprise and new initiatives business.

From driver/ delivery-partner allocations, estimated time of arrival calculations, route planning to delivery cost optimisation and more, mapping technology and underlying points of interest (POI) and route intelligence are critical to the majority of core features that platforms like Grab rely on, it said.

The company claimed that GrabMaps powers more than 800 billion API calls per month across a variety of its services. 

Based on a benchmark study of GrabMaps’ performance versus a leading third party mapping provider, GrabMaps claimed to have a 4x lower error rate and 10x lower latency. 

According to Grab, internal data also show that for countries that have moved completely to GrabMaps, the ease of finding the right POI for transport bookings improved by three percentage points on average, while ETA accuracy improved by one percentage point regionally, with some countries seeing improvements of up to 7.8 percentage points.

It added that GrabMaps’ core advantage is that it is built on the principles of community-based mapping that leverages Grab’s consumers, merchants, and fleet of driver and delivery partners. 

It claimed that its solutions draw from fresh data from millions of orders and rides served daily, with real-time feedback from partners on road closures, business address changes and more.

Philipp Kandal, head of Geo at Grab said, “Grab is the region’s leading superapp, serving a wide range of daily needs for millions of consumers daily, and GrabMaps powers this.

“Our track record, as well as the unparalleled view we have on Southeast Asia, gives us confidence that GrabMaps can be the best map platform of choice for Southeast Asia,” he said.

 

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