Share the Ride and Fare with GrabShare

Here's some good news to those who frequently ride GRAB,  as the leading ride-hailing platform in Southeast Asia, formally announced the launch of GrabShare last Feb 16 at The Brewery, BGC.

Grabshare is the company’s first on-demand commercial carpooling service and the Philippines and Malaysia will be the first two countries where the service will be available.

With GrabShare, passenger demand for rides can be met more efficiently with the existing car supply, helping to reduce the number of cars on the road. In exchange for sharing their ride, passengers enjoy cheaper fares and a maximum of only one additional detour; drivers earn more by completing two bookings in one trip.

“After the success of our first run in Singapore, we’ve decided to bring GrabShare to Manila for the benefit of the Filipino commuters. With it, we can deliver more affordable rides to our passengers and provide higher incomes for our drivers,” said Brian Cu, Grab Philippines’ Country Head. 

First launched in Singapore in December 2016, GrabShare has successfully attracted new riders to the Grab platform. In two months, Grab completed two million GrabShare rides --- a total distance of about 20 million kilometres. Along with the rapid passenger adoption of GrabShare, Grab has seen a 15 percent improvement in its passenger matching rate. With more passenger bookings completed, drivers’ monthly incomes have also increased 10 percent on average. The dramatic success of GrabShare in Singapore has inspired Grab’s confidence in offering its commercial carpooling service to more countries.

“Carpooling is instrumental to achieving our most important goals: to make transportation accessible for our passengers, and to improve the lives of our drivers. With GrabShare, Grab makes the everyday commute of Filipinos even more cost-efficient and hassle-free: Grab passengers won’t have to waste their time because GrabShare keeps detours to a minimum, while drivers are given the opportunity to earn more by completing two bookings in one trip,” said Cu. 

GrabShare combines a maximum of two separate passenger bookings with similar routes into a single ride. Passengers experience only one additional stop before reaching their respective destinations. Drivers can also maximize their potential earnings by completing two jobs in the time it previously took to complete one; this enables them to finish more jobs per hour, boost their incomes and reduce their fuel consumption.

Conceptualized, designed and engineered across Grab’s three research and development centers in Singapore, Seattle and Beijing, GrabShare’s matching algorithm ensures that passengers get to their destinations in the shortest possible time. The algorithm determines a match by factoring in the closest available drivers, travel time, overlap of trip routes, detour distance and current traffic conditions before intuitively sequencing pick-ups and drop-offs.

“Grab is continually refining our carpooling algorithm to ensure we tailor our GrabShare passenger matchings for a hyperlocal carpooling service which mirrors the optimal driver and passenger carpooling habits of a city. This is critical for Grab as each of our cities have unique passenger travel patterns and the app learns to customize how bookings are efficiently matched. In a nutshell, the more people use GrabShare, the more robust and efficient the algorithm ultimately becomes,” said Dominic Widdows, Software Engineer for GrabShare. 

Filipinos have long been accustomed to sharing a vehicle with their fellow commuters. From jeepneys to the UV Express shuttles, getting around the city has, in majority, involved some form of carpooling.

GrabShare aims to disassociate carpooling from the notion of squeezing a passenger into an already-crowded shuttle, or compromising one’s safety. Passengers can now think of carpooling and commuting with the ease and comfort GrabCar is known for, for a fraction of the cost.

“Grab has always supported multi-modal transportation. We would like to think that we have successfully positioned ourselves as a feeder service to the buses and train stations. Our data indicates that a majority of our passengers use Grab to travel to and from these points during the rush hour. We’re optimistic that the convenience and affordability of GrabShare will cement this role further,” said Cu. 

Benefits of GrabShare to passengers include:

1. Cheaper fares
GrabShare fares are up to 30 percent cheaper than GrabCar (Sedan) fares. Fares are fixed and displayed upfront. 

2. Ride with a friend (per booking)
GrabShare users can share their trip with up to one other person as long as they have the same pick-up and drop-off point. Fares are fixed so there’s no need for an additional fee to share the ride with a friend. 

3. Maximum two-stop guarantee
Passengers can expect no more than one additional drop-off during their ride. This ensures everyone reaches their locations fast for less. Drivers will wait up to five minutes for each passenger during pick-ups. 


4. Instant booking
Passengers can book a GrabShare ride on-demand from anywhere, at any time and enjoy socializing with fellow commuters on the ride.

5. Ride with peace of mind
Safety is Grab’s utmost priority. All Grab rides are insured while drivers have gone through regular customer service trainings and a thorough application process.  

Benefits of GrabShare to drivers include:

1. Higher earnings 
Drivers can double the bookings they serve on a single GrabShare trip, with minimal effort. This translates to higher combined fares and an increase in their earnings. 

2. Cost-efficient trips
Every GrabShare trip helps drivers maximize the utility of their vehicle, fuel and time, which means fewer resources are needed to yield the same amount of productivity.

GrabCar : Rides Made Awesome

Taxis offer the convenience of having a car without the hassle and expense of parking and gas, and you can book a taxi with the use of the app available for iOS and Android, it enables users to pledge a tip to the driver to pick them up right where they want, whenever they need a ride. With that in mind comes, GrabTaxi, consumers can now grab an affordable private car without the hassle of ownership and provides the same safety standard.

GrabTaxi, the largest Southeast Asian taxi-booking mobile app, is launching GrabCar on the existing mobile app. GrabCar is a brand new service that provides an authorized on-demand private driver for anyone without the hassle of owning a private car.

This new service provides a new option for passengers and also expands the benefits of GrabTaxi to a new network of drivers. Like GrabTaxi, GrabCar offers private car drivers the opportunity to build on their income by providing them with a much wider user-base and an efficient driver-to-passenger matching.

Anthony Tan said, “What has ensured GrabTaxi’s success in Philippines has been its ability to adapt and evolve to meet our user’s needs. That’s why we are introducing GrabCar; we see that there is an opportunity to fill a gap in the industry without taking away business from our core user-base of taxis. GrabCar will give our passengers that upmarket personalized experience while ensuring a fun and authentic ride.”

Brian Cu, Natasha Bautista and Anthony Tan

GrabCar will complement the public taxi industry by providing an affordable alternative supply to meet this demand. GrabCar will provide passengers the option to select a private car if they require one and a higher chance to make a successful booking during peak hours.

Anthony Tan added,” GrabCar not only gives consumers more options, it will also be positive for taxi drivers in the GrabTaxi network. This will increase the volume of cars available to passengers and build consumer confidence and loyalty in GrabTaxi, eventually leading to more people using the GrabTaxi platform and more rides for taxi drivers.”

The introduction of GrabTaxi into the Philippines has helped repair an inefficient system and develop a safer environment for both passengers and drivers. As a core component of the mobile app, GrabCar holds closely to the pillars of GrabTaxi, which are safety, convenience and speed.

To use GrabCar, users can select the GrabCar option which appears on your GrabTaxi app. This will help narrow down the search to GrabCar vehicles for an affordable chauffeured trip.


The free GrabTaxi app which incorporates the GrabCar function for smartphones and tablets is available from Google Play (Android), App Store (iOS), Windows Phone, and the BlackBerry World app store.

About GrabTaxi
GrabTaxi is a for-profit social start-up with a mission to revolutionize the taxi industry. GrabTaxi started in Kuala Lumpur and now has operations in Singapore, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. Runners-up in the 2011 Harvard Business School Business Plan Contest, its core product is a taxi-dispatch service with GPS-enhancements, allowing passengers to hail the nearest taxi with extreme ease. Since 2012, tens of thousands of taxi drivers have been using the GrabTaxi mobile application to receive bookings.  Passengers can book taxis on their smartphones and tablets with ease and enjoy a great user experience. As a humble start-up, GrabTaxi believes that business and social value can be achieved in parallel. It hopes to make a difference in Philippines’ public transportation by making it easier, safer and more efficient to book taxis.