"The Murray Hunter Substack has noted a lengthy tweet about how SE Asian ride sharing superapp Grab Holdings Limited (NASDAQ: GRAB) has followed the old ‘Air Asia’ playbook with its online booking scam of inserting a “compulsory” 30 sen (roughly several US cents) insurance charge on rides that is hard to opt out of for future rides (if a customer even notices it on their receipt). That may sound like a small charge, but consider this:
'Wee looked at the potential extra revenue that might come Grab’s way in this extra add on. If we accept the figure of 2.5 mil rides per day as stated by Grab in its website, the additional daily income is RM750,000 [US$167,821.5] - the monthly extra income is RM22.5 mil!! [US$5,034,645]
This is a similar business model used by Air Asia in the past. They got fined for this in Australia some years ago. Grab now sees this strategy as a blue ocean until its closed off.'
I rarely need to use taxis or ridesharing apps - so I can’t comment - other than to say that Malaysians have been telling me for years that Grab is “expensive” in Malaysia and to use other (I guess local…) ride sharing app alternatives..."
I linked to your post in my Monday EM links collection post: https://emergingmarketskeptic.substack.com/p/emerging-markets-week-february-17-2025
I like in KL and mentioned this in my Dec 30 post (https://emergingmarketskeptic.substack.com/p/emerging-markets-week-december-30-2024 has the imbedded links):
"The Murray Hunter Substack has noted a lengthy tweet about how SE Asian ride sharing superapp Grab Holdings Limited (NASDAQ: GRAB) has followed the old ‘Air Asia’ playbook with its online booking scam of inserting a “compulsory” 30 sen (roughly several US cents) insurance charge on rides that is hard to opt out of for future rides (if a customer even notices it on their receipt). That may sound like a small charge, but consider this:
'Wee looked at the potential extra revenue that might come Grab’s way in this extra add on. If we accept the figure of 2.5 mil rides per day as stated by Grab in its website, the additional daily income is RM750,000 [US$167,821.5] - the monthly extra income is RM22.5 mil!! [US$5,034,645]
This is a similar business model used by Air Asia in the past. They got fined for this in Australia some years ago. Grab now sees this strategy as a blue ocean until its closed off.'
I rarely need to use taxis or ridesharing apps - so I can’t comment - other than to say that Malaysians have been telling me for years that Grab is “expensive” in Malaysia and to use other (I guess local…) ride sharing app alternatives..."