Southeast Asia’s leading ride-hailing platform Grab has improved the accuracy of fare estimations, estimated time of arrivals (ETAs) and trip routing for its more than 60 million passengers through an expanded partnership with Here Technologies.
The global map data and location services provider’s ongoing mission is to create the most up-to-date 3D representation of the physical world. The company’s cloud-based map, which sees a fleet of Here True survey vehicles continuously map the road network down to 1in (2cm) accuracy, supports driver safety through automated car features and connected advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS).
The new partnership will see Here provide location services in Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, which Grab will combine with real-world on-road data sourced from its 1.3 million drivers, Southeast Asia’s largest land transport fleet. Here will also provide its extensive Places of Interest (POIs) database gathered through public sector and enterprise partners such as Samsung, Amazon and Microsoft, and as well as real-time traffic data sourced from connected vehicles and devices.
The data-sharing partnership will overcome the challenges of operating in rapidly developing countries, such as Myanmar and the Philippines, which have no established national address system. Here’s True vehicle cameras and lidar technology capture over 500 different attributes, such as road geometry, speed limits and road signs, to create a high-definition machine-readable 3D map.
The company’s Matrix API forms the foundation of the collaboration, enabling Grab to improve the way drivers are assigned to passengers. In addition, Here’s Basic Routing API provides ride hailers with more reliable ETAs and corresponding fare estimations.
“We are increasingly becoming an active contributor to solving Southeast Asia’s long-term and fundamental issues: congestion, jobs, and access to the digital economy, and Here is helping us to achieve that goal as one of our core mapping and location data partners,” explained Jerald Singh, head of product at Grab.
“Southeast Asia is developing quickly, with new roads and new rules emerging every day. By layering local map data on top of Here’s comprehensive location data, we can optimize driver-passenger interactions, and further streamline our backend dispatch systems.”
Here’s APAC director, Mark Whitmore, commented, “We’re proud to support Grab’s fast evolving platform and growing network of passengers, drivers and new service lines with our robust and flexible on-demand location platform. We’ll help Grab streamline pick-up and drop-off processes, provide reliable ETAs, and ultimately improve traffic management in underserviced cities.”
