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GrabTaxi drops taxi in rebrand to Grab

The Southeast Asian ride-sharing service provider has rebranded itself to Grab, in a move it says reflects the company's goal to offer a whole gamut of transport options.
Written by Eileen Yu, Senior Contributing Editor

GrabTaxi has unveiled a rebranding campaign that it says reflects the company's various services and goal to offer a whole gamut of transport options.

Now called Grab, the Southeast Asian ride-sharing brand encompasses its taxi network GrabTaxi, private car service GrabCar, motorbike taxis GrabBike, social carpooling service GrabHitch, and last-mile delivery GrabExpress.

Grab Group CEO and Co-founder Anthony Tan said: "We've grown over the years and are now much more than a taxi app. This new brand is an important evolution that represents our goal to out-serve our customers. We are not only providing passengers with a transport service, we are saving them time and ensuring they have a safe ride.

"Grab aims to make transportation accessible to everyone in Southeast Asia. We have...the most number of transport services that cater to all price-points, all available in one app. We have something for everyone and are committed to delivering the best possible user experience," Tan added.

First launched in 2012, the company's network currently comprises more than 200,000 drivers and its app has clocked more than 11 million downloads. According to Grab, since mid-2015, its the number of monthly average GrabCar rides increase 35 percent while its GrabBike rides see a monthly average 74 percent growth across the region.

Its services are currently available in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

With its new branding, Grab pledged to provide its passengers "the freedom to choose the best transport option" available to reach their destinations "safely and conveniently".

It added that its app had been beefed up with more user-friendly features, including personalised pickup and dropoff locations, as well its GrabPay mobile wallet, which would allow customers to choose between multiple credit cards to make payment. This multi-credit card support was launched Thursday in Singapore, and would be made available in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines next month. GrabPay would be deployed in Thailand and Vietnam in the first half of the year, the company said.

Its app update also encompassed a new function, called GrabWork, which would enable passengers to separately mark out rides to be expensed for business such as by tagging these with an expense code and including trip detail fields.

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