The on-demand carpooling service has already logged over 2 million rides in Singapore

Ride-hailing giant Grab has announced the rollout of its popular carpooling service GrabShare in Malaysia and Philippines.

For the uninitiated, GrabShare is essentially Grab’s answer to Uber’s uberPOOL. And although it was released a few months later than uberPOOL, Grab believes its algorithm, which was developed in its R&D centres in Beijing, Seattle, and Singapore, will deliver a smoother carpooling experience.

GrabShare pairs up to two passenger’s bookings (or two parties, an additional passenger can tag along one party at no additional cost) with similar destinations travelling along the most efficient trip route.

The algorithm factors in relevant measurements such as travel time, current traffic conditions, overlap of traffic routes and closest available drivers, to deliver the most optimised passenger matches.

Also Read: Grab: How we grew a business from 40 to 630,000 drivers

Passengers can expect a fare reduction of up to 30 per cent when they use GrabShare as opposed to the normal GrabCar Economy fares (although usual surge fees still apply), and Grab takes a 20 per cent cut of the driver’s fee as usual.

“Grab is continually refining our carpooling algorithm to ensure we tailor our GrabShare passenger matchings for a hyperlocal carpooling service, which mirrors the optimal driver and passenger carpooling habits of each city,” said Dominic Widdows, Software Engineer for GrabShare, in a press release.

“This is critical for Grab as each of our cities have unique passenger travel patterns and the app is about to customise how bookings are efficiently matched. In a nutshell, the more people use GrabShare, the more robust and efficient the algorithm ultimately becomes,” he added.

Since its first launch in Singapore two months ago, GrabShare has logged over two million rides. It claims the service has helped increase Grab drivers’ income by an average of 10 per cent.

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Image Credit: Grab

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