Good news, commuters! Grab Malaysia has just announced the regional launch of GrabShare, Malaysia’s first on-demand commercial carpooling service.
Launched in Malaysia & Phillippines yesterday, passenger demand for rides can be met more efficiently with the existing car supply. This in turn helps to play a role in reducing traffic congestion. Passengers also get to enjoy cheaper rides with minimal detours, while drivers earn more by completing two bookings in one trip! #2Birds1App
GrabShare pairs just two different passenger bookings with similar trip routes within a single trip. Hence, passengers will only experience a maximum of two stops (each car is allowed to hold only 4 people at any given time) before reaching their destinations while paying 30% less on rides.
Dominic Widdows, software engineer at Grab Seattle, explains that matching two bookings with any given driver is actually a lot more complex than it seems. The matching system has to take into account not only the drivers available, but also the travel time, overlap of trip routes, detour distance and current traffic conditions before arranging pick-ups and drop-offs.
At the same time, the matching system has to work out whether customer A or customer B has to be picked up first and the order they need to be dropped off in to ensure that both get to their destinations as quickly as possible. This matching can happen for two GrabShare customers right before pick-up, but it can also happen when the driver is already underway with the first booking.
Conceptualised, designed and engineered across Grab’s three research and development centres in Singapore, Seattle and Beijing, GrabShare’s matching algorithm ensures passengers get to their destinations in the shortest possible time.
Since its launch in Singapore two months ago, GrabShare has completed over two million trips. It claims the service has helped increase Grab drivers’ income by an average of 10 per cent.
For more information on how GrabShare works, access here.
