Grab (application)

Grab (formerly known as GrabTaxi) is a mobile e-hailing application available in six countries.[1] It is an automated smartphone based booking and dispatch platform for the taxi industry in Southeast Asia, available in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines. Their vision is to revamp the Southeast Asian taxi industry, making it a safer and more efficient means of transport for the Southeast Asian communities.[2] As of March 2015, the number of taxi drivers registered in the network has increased to 75,000, with a total of 3.8 million mobile application users across Southeast Asia.[3] GrabTaxi app can be downloaded from Android Google Play, Apple iOS and BlackBerry World.

History

Originally established in 2011 as MyTeksi in Malaysia, GrabTaxi is a Southeast Asia focused taxi-booking app founded by Harvard Business School graduates Anthony Tan and Tan Hooi Ling.[4] The idea for GrabTaxi first started when Anthony Tan was a student at Harvard Business School and a classmate pulled him aside to gripe about how hard it was to hail a cab in Malaysia. Tan drew up a business plan for an Uber-like service that won backing from angel investors, leading the youngest of three brothers to quit the family business in 2012 to start GrabTaxi, a mobile application that assigns available cabs nearby to commuters using mapping and location-sharing technology.[5] Tan pitched the idea to the panel of the 2011 Harvard Business Plan Competition, that led to them being placed second, making them the first all-Asian team to have succeeded in many years.