Southeast Asian taxi app Grab (formerly GrabTaxi) has revealed the scale of its growth in Indonesia so far this year as the business starts to branch out in terms of product and markets.
Indonesia is confirmed in the short trading statement as its biggest market out of the six it operates in, measured in terms of completed rides across all platforms.
Its other points of sale are Singapore, where the business is based, Malaysia, where it was founded in 2011, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
Business in Indonesia for its GrabCar and GrabBike units has grown more than 250 times since this time last year, with GrabBike also growing by 300 times this year alone despite the business removing a lot of the subsidies which were in place to grow the business.
The success in Indonesia has been achieved by focusing its effort on the Jakarta megalopolis, home to some 30 million people. Grab also says that by operating under a single brand it is generating better cross-use among its product lines, with "more than one-in-four of Grab’s Indonesia monthly active users use more than one Grab service".
It is looking to replicate its approach to Jakarta by expanding operations into eight new cities in Indonesia, looking at areas with a catchment of two million or more. Across its six southeast Asian markets it currently serves 30 cities, has 320,000 drivers on its books while its app has been downloaded more than 17 million times.
Just under a year ago it picked up $350 million in a Series E round with participants including a Chinese government investment vehicle as well as China's biggest taxi app business Didi. Japan's Softbank was an investor in a $250 million round at the end of December 2014.
It also became part of the Rides Everywhere alliance, a global network of taxi app businesses set up by Lyft and Didi last September. The Grab blog confirms that Grab app users can book a Lyft with their app when in the US.
Closer to home, a few months ago it signed a deal allowing Chinese visitors to Singapore and Thailand to pay for their Grab ride using their Alipay account.
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