Reportedly, ride-hailing firm Grab is betting on its increasing food delivery business to impel growth and productivity in the long term, a senior official at the company said to CNBC. Kell Jay Lim—Regional Head of GrabFood—said to CNBC, “We have seen wonderful growth in our food business. Earlier, we had food delivery businesses across Southeast Asia, but not in the region.” In 2016, Grab’s food business started and flourished widely across Southeast Asia in the past year following the start-up obtained Uber’s domestic operations that included UberEats.
The delivery service was obtainable in two Indonesian cities during the beginning of 2018 but is at present in over 200 cities mostly in Indonesia, and also in Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Singapore, and Vietnam. The company stated that the GMV (gross merchandise volume) for the food business surged by 900% in June 2019 yearly from a moderately small base. Normally, GMV is a monitored metric by e-commerce firms that calculates the whole sales dollar value of products sold on their platforms. For the same duration, delivery volume surged by almost seven-folds, as reported by Grab. In general, GrabFood sums up for almost 20% of Grab’s total GMV at present, in comparison to less than 5% in 2018.
Recently, Grab was in news for teaming up with Heineken power its “last mile” connection to customers. Reportedly, Heineken has signed an agreement with South-East Asia’s “superapp” Grab to utilize its services in food, mobility, delivery, and payment. In its statement, Grab said that the contract is the first of this kind, in which a brand has inked an agreement with the technology unicorn to utilize the full assortment of its services. The nucleus focus of the contract is to drive demand and sales for Heineken’s beer and cider brands in the South East Asia region.
