GrabHitch — the carpooling innovation beta launches in Malaysia

GrabHitch enables anyone to offset the cost of their journey and meet awesome peeps. So be cool. Carpool.

Carpooling is one of the most efficient ways to travel, and it lives up to the adage, “killing two birds with one stone”. After all, the end goal is the same destination, and it makes sense to travel in one vehicle where possible, right? This is the same mentality that a local startup has looked into providing for their users.

With that in mind, ride-sharing platform Grab has just introduced GrabHitch, an affordable door-to-door service which caters to commuters who are traveling to and from a specific location. It covers the cost by picking up those who are heading to the same location in the first place.

It’s easy to see how carpooling will make sense, it’s one of the most efficient ways to travel, its simply people matching two people going into the same direction and that is exactly what GrabHitch will do.

By riding together, both drivers and passengers will be able to save cost together, meet new people and laugh together and both drivers and passengers will be able to save on cost of travel.

Since the advent of ride sharing apps, commuters in the Klang Valley have slowly started to embrace the idea of leaving their cars at home. However, most are still accustomed to having the flexibility and freedom of driving. Happily Grab has now introduced a very local solution that will enable drivers to cover the cost of owning a car all at their own convenience.

Enter GrabHitch, a carpooling service available via the Grab app that allows drivers to pick up passengers going along the same way on their daily commute.

“This latest service caters to both drivers and passengers who are cost-conscious. Drivers with extra space in their vehicles have the option of picking up passengers who are going the same way to offset the cost of his/her journey, whilst passengers only need to pay for a fraction of the cost compared to other option of transportation,” said Ngiam Xin Wei, Regional Head of GrabHitch.

In essence, GrabHitch addresses the very uniquely Malaysian problem of single occupancy vehicles (SOVs) on the road. According a study conducted by Nielsen, Malaysia has the 3rd highest car ownership globally whereby 93% of Malaysian households own at least a car whilst 54% have more than one car. To add to that, 6 million trips are made in the Klang Valley alone on a daily basis via private cars, most of which are SOVs, that’s 83% of all travel on a daily basis.

“Therefore, there is a significant pool of vehicles with extra seats for more passengers. Every car has the potential to play a part in improving Malaysia’s public transport network and meet the growing demand of rides each day,” said Jaygan Fu, Country Manager of Grab Malaysia.

Benefits of GrabHitch

In addition to the convenience and price factor, GrabHitch is a welcomed alternative for various other reasons.

• Environment: As GrabHitch is a social car-pooling service, this potentially reduces the number of cars on the road and fume emission, and on the long term, plays a part to minimise air pollution.
• Safety: To help create a connected ridesharing community in Malaysia, GrabHitch drivers and passengers are require to log in to Facebook to use the service. This enables both parties to preview their driver / passenger and if they share mutual friends. Both parties can also indicate that they only want to travel with someone of the same gender. All drivers are also subjected to a background check and both passengers and drivers are also able to gain access to our 24-hour call center.
• Mutual network: Suitable for journeys of all kinds, GrabHitch makes it easier to enlarge your network to meet people with mutual interests. For example, two employees of the same organisation may be travelling to work together from Subang to KL City Centre, or perhaps, two fitness fans from Damansara Perdana could be going to the same gym together.

How GrabHitch works

Passengers can pre-book a ride from seven days in advance to up to 2 hours before pickup, by simply by entering their pickup location and destination. Drivers and passengers will be notified when a successful match of the route is made.

GrabHitch drivers should only pick up one booking per trip and the fares will only cover the driver’s variable costs, such as petrol and car depreciation. Drivers can also enjoy the security of choosing their passengers according to preferences built into the app such as, same gender only, nearest, least detour, best price or has mutual Facebook friends.

GrabHitch now!

GrabHitch is now open for the driver signup. Drivers can download or update their Grab App to the latest version which is available for free on Google Play or App Store. To sign-up, just click on the “GrabHitch” icon, select the “Drive” button and follow the instructions. For commuters, they can start scheduling rides GrabHitch effective May 15, 2016. In fact, to kick off this new service, on May 16, our GrabHitch pioneers, consisting of staff of Grab Malaysia and our very first batch of GrabHitch drivers, will be on the road offering free rides to passengers.

To find out more about Grab and GrabHitch, please log on to www.grab.com/my/hitch