GrabShare enters paid car-pooling market
Ride-hailing platform Grab launched its first commercial car-pool service GrabShare that puts it one step deeper in a market dominated by rival Uber.
Available from yesterday, the GrabShare service pairs just two passenger bookings with similar routes within a single trip, said Grab.
Passengers will experience a maximum of two stops before reaching their destinations.
For example, if passenger A commences the ride and is paired with passenger B, depending on the more efficient trip route, passenger A may make a first stop to pick up passenger B and a second stop to drop off passenger B.
This new offering, the commercial extension of GrabHitch, is the company's fourth transport service in Singapore.
It also follows Grab's introduction of taxi-hailing service GrabTaxi and private car-hailing service GrabCar.
Its launch puts it in the same arena as one serviced by UberPool, a similar commercial car-pooling service offered by Uber for its commercial car-hailing service UberX. About one in every three UberX trips in Singapore is car-pooled.
Grab says GrabShare's matching algorithm ensures passengers get to their destinations in the shortest possible time.
The algorithm, conceptualised, designed and engineered across Grab's three research and development centres in Singapore, Seattle and Beijing, calculates and determines a match by factoring the nearest available drivers, travel time, overlap of trip routes, detour distance and traffic conditions before sequencing pick-ups and drop-offs.
GrabShare fares are priced up to 30 per cent lower than GrabCar Economy fares. Fares are fixed and displayed upfront.
For drivers, it helps maximising potential income by cutting the time and distance spent on one GrabShare ride, says Grab.
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