Grab Invests $100M for Myanmar Market Expansion

The Southeast Asia’s leading ride-hailing app, Grab, is set to commit $100 million over the next three years to grow its Myanmar market share and extend other services to more cities in the country, as it extends its battle with Uber Technologies Inc., an American ride-sharing company.

It also aims to launch Grab products, including its digital payment method, GrabPay, in the country. It also plans to build  a local team of 200 to spearhead expansion in other countries, and it explores offering its corporate “Grab for Work” solution after seeing healthy demand.

Moreover, Grab will not only work with the local government to expand its ride-hailing service to more cities, it will also end its 24/7 call centers.

“Myanmar is a very important focus for us,” Prseident Ming Maa said in a phone interview.

“It’s a very large, rapidly growing mobile-first economy.”

Both Grab and Uber launched services in Myanmar’s capital, Yangon, earlier this year looking for growth in a market where internet penetration has increased from next to nothing a few years ago to nearly 90% at present, with more people using apps and mobile services.

Over the years, Myanmar has seen an increasing mobile services adoption followed by businesses, including operators and tech companies, flowed into the once secluded country sensing an opportunity. Heightened competition saw the cost of the SIM card, which  was once $200 or up to $1,500 during military rule, drop to below $5 prompting the country’s 55 million population to move to mobile all together.

In 2015, Myanmar has the most number of people who signed up for mobile phone service than any country in the world, except China and India, countries with much larger populations, according to the Asian Development Bank.

Currently, Myanmar has more registered SIM cards than its people, a fact that was unimaginable just a half decade ago, and, with no real legacy established internet, the country has jumped onto mobile.

Since its debut in Yangon in March, Grab has grown to reach 25,000 unique bookings a in the city every day with more than 6,000 trained, screened, licensed Myanmar drivers. It is already in a partnership with CB Bank and Wave Money, with which Grab enables drivers to have seamless transactions and get access to other financial services in a highly cash dependent country. Drivers receive discounted mobile data plans and free personal accident insurance.

“Grab in Yangon has taken off at an incredible pace,” said co-founder and CEO Anthony Tan.

“Our commitment to address transportation challenges with locally-suited and innovative solutions that create more social and economic opportunity works well for both Grab and our local communities. This is already one of our fastest-growing markets,” he added.

Grab is available across seven countries in Southeast Asia, with more than 55 million app downloads and 1.2 million drivers.

In Indonesia, Grab is also working to offer payments outside of car services and it seems like it will be similar to Myanmar at some point, since credit card ownership is below 5%, and the jump to mobile leaves Myanmar open to digital payment service.

The Singapore-based Grab has relied on its massive funding from Softbank Group Corp. to build its scale and gain an edge on Uber.

The Myanmar is the latest battlefield for the two ride-hailing giants, Grab and Uber, which will also contend with local taxi-hailing services, such as Hello Cabs and Oway Ride.

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