Jakarta Globe, Vanesha Manuturi, May 20, 2015
Jakarta. Malaysia’s GrabTaxi is adding motorcycle jockeys to its services in Jakarta on Wednesday, as part of an expansion to cater to Indonesia’s rapidly growing urban population.
Jakarta. Malaysia’s GrabTaxi is adding motorcycle jockeys to its services in Jakarta on Wednesday, as part of an expansion to cater to Indonesia’s rapidly growing urban population.
The Kuala
Lumpur-based startup, which connects taxi drivers with customers through a
smartphone application, rolled out the trial run of its “GrabBike” service
starting Wednesday. The service focuses solely on motorcycle taxis, better
known as ojek, according to a statement on Wednesday.
“GrabTaxi
is strongly committed to create a safe and efficient transportation system in
Southeast Asia. Ojek is a very popular mode of transportation in Indonesia, so
[our entry] was only a matter of time,” Cheryl Goh, vice president of marketing
at GrabTaxi Holding Group, said in a statement.
Under the
trial version, the pickup service is currently limited to the business
districts of South Jakarta – Kuningan and Setiabudi – although delivery or
courier services will be available across the capital city in the future,
according to the statement.
Jakarta is
the third city where GrabTaxi is rolling out its GrabBike service, after Ho Ci
Minh City and Hanoi in Vietnam last year.
GrabTaxi’s
GrabBike service will be competing head to head with homegrown startup Go-jek,
which has connected ojek drivers to customers for services ranging from
transportation to courier since 2010.
GrabTaxi
entered Jakarta offering online taxi booking services last June. It has since
expanded to Surabaya, East Java and Padang, West Sumatra.
First
established in Kuala Lumpur three years ago, GrabTaxi boasts an application
that has been downloaded more than 4.4 million times while more than 83,000
customers and drivers are using its services across Indonesia, Singapore, the
Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia.
GlobeAsisa
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