GrabTaxi Has Secretly Been Experimenting With A New Initiative Islandwide

Companies are known to run secret little experiments – because experiments that work might put itself ahead of its competitors.

Earlier this week, we came across one such experiment by taxi booking app GrabTaxi, which intrigued us a lot:

The image above is taken by the Vulcan Post team at the lobby of Albert Court Hotel, and at the time when we stumbled upon it, people were actually using it to book taxis.

When we tried to find out more about it, we couldn’t find any mention of it online, nor can we find any information about it on GrabTaxi’s social media channels. We’ve since gotten in touch with GrabTaxi to find out more, and here’s what we know.

GrabVenue Terminals

GrabTaxi is pretty much trying to dominate the mindshare for the term “grab”, as we have seen through its various marketing initiatives – GrabDurian, GrabLove as well as their various product offerings GrabCar, GrabBike and of course, GrabTaxi itself.

Here’s a new one to add on to them: GrabVenue.

According to a spokesperson at GrabTaxi, GrabTaxi offers an app-based enterprise solution to corporate partners through their GrabVenue Terminals – which are kiosks where passengers, travellers and concierge teams can book rides seamlessly and concurrently.

When you sign on as a corporate partner of GrabTaxi, a corporate partner account is set up, and the GrabTaxi app is downloaded onto Android devices and tablets at the terminals. These terminals, or kiosks, are then placed at the corporate partner’s location, so that their customers enjoy value added service on their premise.

We also understand that there are close to 20 GrabVenue Terminals across the island currently, mostly located in hotels and serviced residences, enabling concierge teams and travellers to book their taxi rides. Booking through these terminals is useful for travellers or retail customers who are on the go and may not have Internet or mobile data connectivity.

GrabTaxi did not reveal how successful or effective these kiosks are, but shared that they have received “positive feedbacks” from their partners that the GrabVenue Terminals have been instrumental in enabling concierges to book multiple cabs for their guests and for travellers to book their own rides.

GrabVenue was an initiative started since the second half of 2015.

“We are looking to scale this ultra adaptable model even further across commercial, residential, hospitality and even education and healthcare premises – as well as expand this service offering across the region,” GrabTaxi told Vulcan Post. Currently, there are over 100 locations around in Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand) which has GrabVenue set up.

We also asked GrabTaxi the cost to set up such a service with GrabTaxi.

“We believe in developing simple solutions accessible to all who need them. GrabTaxi partners with Samsung as our technology enabler to roll out our enterprise solution in Singapore. They have made their tablets accessible to our partners via a lease model. As we are providing our partners with an extra service offering, they do not charge us for the placements of our terminals. In fact, since we launched our terminals, we have been receiving multiple enquiries from various companies on how they can obtain one for their venues.”

From what it looks like, GrabTaxi is ramping up its network of customer touch points at physical locations to compliment its online presence. This reminds us of on demand grocer Redmart which also experimented with their own physical lockers to make delivery more convenient to our customers.

With GrabTaxi starting to dominate even the physical locations, are there still room for the others?