South East Asia's leading on-demand transportation and mobile payments app, Grab Inc. has announced a strategic partnership with Toyota Group's trading arm Toyota Tsuho.
Toyota Tsuho has reportedly made an investment in Grab through its Next Technology Fund. Grab is currently looking to raise $2.4 billion from investments. With its investment Toyota Tsuho becomes the latest financer for Grab. Earlier this year, Japanese investment company SoftBank and China's transportation solutions provider Didi Chuxing had made investments in Grab.
Grab is Toyota's first investment made through its Next Technology Fund, which it launched in April 2017. Grab today launched a new data-focused pilot program as part of a MoU it signed with Toyota Motor Corporation, Toyota Financial Services Corporation and Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance Co., Ltd.
With the help of the program, Grab aims to offer improved access to connected car services to its driver partners across South East Asia. The program will involve sharing data on driving patterns from 100 Toyota cars in Grab's fleet. The data will be captured by Toyota's data-transmission driving recorder called 'Trans Log'.
Toyota's technical support will enhance the Grab experience for drivers. The data shared between Grab and Toyota will help Toyota engineers analyze the data set and offer recommendations that will enhance connected car services such as user based insurance and predictive car maintenance on the Toyota Mobility Service Platform.
"Toyota is a Global leader in the automobile sector, and one of the most popular brands with drivers on our platform. We are confident this collaboration will benefit our driver partners and help them serve our passengers better." Anthony Tan, Grab's CEO and Co-Founder said in a statement.
Grab enjoys a 95% market share in taxi hailing services and 72% market share in private car rental service in 87 cities across seven South East Asian countries including, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.
Toyota's decision to partner with Grab will ensure more than 620 million Grab customers will get a better experience and convenient mobility services across SE Asia.
