Grab has launched GrabMaps, the company's own mapping and location-based service and is offering the mapping data and tools to businesses.
The Singapore-based ride-hailing and payments platform plans to offer the business-to-business (B2B) service to government agencies and businesses in the technology, logistics, and telecommunications sectors.
"The company has invested in the technology to improve driving efficiency and costs optimisation. Commercialising this technology is another step forward for our young, but fast-growing enterprise and new initiatives business," said Tan Hooi Ling, co-founder of Grab.
Key Highlights
- Companies will be able to utilise GrabMaps by using their map-making tools in a software-as-a-service model and licence the data from Grab.
- The service includes Grab’s own map-making camera, Kartacam.
- The mapping technology was initially developed for in-house use and is based on community-based mapping with contributions from consumers, merchants, and the company’s driver and delivery partners.
- With GrabMaps, Grab can optimise routes for driver and delivery partners and allocate partners for ride and delivery requests efficiently by providing better estimated time of arrival for users.
- Grab mentioned that the mapping technology is being used in 7 out of 8 countries that the company operates in and it aims to solely rely on GrabMaps by the third quarter of this year.
- With existing players like Google and TomTom dominating the mapping and geolocation fields, Grab said that its advantage is having an abundant crowdsourced data from the 8 Southeast Asia countries it is operating in.
