Grab expands beyond ride-hailing with new services to become "everyday super app"

In a bid to evolve from ride-hailing app to super app, Grab announced four new services to its platform – trip planning, hotel booking, on-demand video streaming and movie tickets.

To deliver these services, Grab is partnering with Booking.com and Agoda for its hotel bookings (no surprises here since Booking Holdings has invested $200 million into Grab), video-streaming service HOOQ and movie-ticketing platform BookMyShow.

Agoda went live Tuesday while Booking.com will kick in by the second quarter. All four services will be progressively rolled out across Southeast Asian markets by June this year.

By year end, the company, which raised a total of $3 billion funding in 2018, will have a total of 500 partners on the GrabPlatform. GrabPlatform is a suite of APIs that give partners access to parts of Grab’s technology, launched last year.

Grab’s advancement into multiple sectors comes as no surprise, following its shift into food and mobile payments in the past two years, as it pursues its ambitions of becoming Southeast Asia’s most dominant super app.

Travel insurance will come next, and the company will also extend ticketing to beyond movies.

Says Jerald Singh, group head of product and design at Grab, says: “A deliberate decision we made was that our super app would be powered by partnerships … we recognized early that we couldn’t build these high-quality services on our own. It’s a true differentiator between [us] and others in the region.”

Convenience and rewards will act as key incentives in getting users to interact with the other services available within its platform. “All of it is stitched together … so you can use all these services, transact seamlessly and earn rewards,” says Singh.

For example, its new "Hotel" feature grants Platinum, Gold and Silver customers with vouchers of up to $20 off on Agoda.

Meanwhile, Platinum members also automatically gain access to Booking.com’s Genius program, granting them a 10% discount. On top of the savings enticement, users will also get free personal travel insurance with every booking, taking one extra hassle out of the trip-planning process.

On its Trip Planning tile, Grab offers real-time public transport information, route options and live updates to help users navigate in-destination (not unlike Google Maps). Of course, it will also have a built-in option to book a GrabCar, providing “first-mile-last-mile transportation options.”

Beyond travel, users can enjoy two free months of free video streaming and a discounted monthly rate by subscribing to HOOQ via the Grab app. They can also watch free-to-access content, forgoing a subscription altogether.

And through its partnership with Indian ticketing company BookMyShow, which launched in Indonesia a couple of years ago, users can search, compare and buy tickets across Singapore’s main cinema chains.

Singh paints a picture of a near future, where customers can plan their commute, stream videos during their journey, consider food delivery, book movie tickets and even start planning their next holiday, without once having to leave the platform.

It builds upon the narrative of how consumers use their mobiles today, and how a super app like Grab will continue to find ways to become a fundamental part of those interactions.

Singh declined to disclose details of the financials behind these partnerships, and Jasmin Kossmann, country director Singapore at Agoda, responding to a question on whether this partnership was aimed at gaining incremental business, says, “Incremental bookings would be ideal,” but the main purpose behind the partnership was for the convenience of customers to book wherever they wanted.

Making a grab for the Southeast Asia travel market

It is apparent that Grab has a keen eye on the region’s enormous travel market potential – plus travel services have higher transaction value.

“It’s really the perfect time to be in travel,” says Singh, who used to head mobile at Expedia. Singapore residents are among the most traveled and highest spenders in Southeast Asia. The region itself is predicted to reach $115.9 billion in outbound travel spend by 2028.

Singh explains that Grab’s plan to build the future of mobility as something that is “shared, seamless and smart… [will bring] Grab customers closer to something they love … travel.”

The combination of its hotel booking, trip-planning and ride-hailing functionalities allows Grab to position itself across silos and multiple stages of the travel funnel. And of course it begs the question of when it will take on flights and tours and activities.

There were no answers to that at Tuesday's media event but surely, that’s only a matter of time.

Grab is not alone in the race to become Southeast Asia’s leading super app. GoJek, its most ferocious competitor, has expanded outside its Indonesia home market. Traveloka which has a strategic investor in Expedia, raised another $420 million this month and is also getting into experiences and dining and expanding beyond Indonesia.

* This article originally appeared on WebinTravel.