This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on November 8, 2017 - November 14, 2017

KUALA LUMPUR: Ride-hailing service provider Grab Inc said it has completed its one billionth ride across Southeast Asia, after 66 concurrent rides in one second on Oct 26 across Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Myanmar.

It said its ridership growth has been accelerating rapidly this year, showing on-demand transportation’s enormous untapped potential in Southeast Asia, and how its multimodal, hyperlocal approach as well as its world-class technology have enabled it to capture increasing demand.

“This milestone is a great testament to Grab’s business and management team’s strengths as we have dramatically increased the size of our business in such a short time. We have not only maintained the same great service, but also improved on it by continuing to innovate our business, solve local problems and change lives through technology,” Grab co-founder and chief executive officer Anthony Tan said in a statement.

“I’m immensely grateful to our partners — the drivers, passengers, investors and [other] partners for their support, and the incredible Grab team that has managed this massive scale-up together.”

Tan said Grab is also making a big leap to enable the GrabPay platform to be used beyond just transportation, and making digital and financial inclusion possible for everyone in Southeast Asia. “We are now looking forward to serving our billionth transaction soon via GrabPay.”

According to Grab, the one-billion-ride milestone builds on a series of major upgrades to Grab’s research and development (R&D), as well as technological capabilities as the platform rapidly scales up to meet increasing demand from its drivers and passengers.

To this, Grab said it had recently roped in Theo Vassilakis as chief technology officer. In addition, Grab said it had doubled the number of its R&D centres from three to six, with new centres in Bangalore, India; Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; and Jakarta, Indonesia.

With a presence in seven countries and 142 cities in Southeast Asia, Grab offers private car, motorbike, taxi and carpooling services, with one out of three passengers using multiple services.

Grab added that it has a 95% share in the third-party taxi-hailing market, and 72% in private-vehicle hailing, with the largest land fleet in Southeast Asia. It also has over two million drivers earning up to 55% more than the national average hourly wage on its platform.

In a separate statement, Grab said it has partnered Singapore-based TransferTo, a global cross-border mobile payment network provider, to enable its drivers to collect their earnings via the GrabPay mobile wallet, as soon as each work shift ends.

This allows the drivers to link their GrabPay accounts directly to their personal bank accounts, or go for a cash pickup option. Within the first few weeks after the launch of the partnership, more than six million transactions were reportedly done.

Grab said with added security, its drivers can receive money on a daily basis, and in real time, more drivers are willing to take on more rides. “This means we are able to scale our growth a lot faster across the region,” it said.

“Our partners (drivers) represent the distribution network through which we will enable digital payments across Southeast Asia. TransferTo’s extensive global payment network has allowed us (Grab) to transfer daily earnings faster to our invaluable partners,” said GrabPay head Jason Thompson.