Grab Singapore to move to bigger CBD office

It also opened new R&D centres in India and Vietnam.

Ride-hailing company Grab has opened two new R&D centres in Bangalore, India and Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam to double its total number of R&D facilities to six, whilst announcing plans to relocate its Singapore operations to a larger office space in the city-state’s central business district.

The expansion is set to support Grab’s growing multi-modal transport platform and proprietary payments system across Southeast Asia. Three new transport services were launched in the last quarter – GrabShare, GrabCoach, and GrabShuttle. Grab has also recently rolled out its customer loyalty programme, GrabRewards.

“Southeast Asia is developing at a breakneck pace and we have an unprecedented opportunity to deliver a platform that caters to the region’s mobile-first environment and infrastructure needs,” said Grab co-founder Tan Hooi Ling.

The new R&D centre in India will focus on developing new payment technologies for GrabPay, whilst the R&D centre in Vietnam will utilise local engineering talent to develop in-app user experiences tailored to Vietnamese users.

Grab’s R&D centre in Singapore, meanwhile, will be moving to an office space of almost 100,000 sq ft to become Grab’s largest. “Our expansion, coupled with our recent $10m investment in GrabCar, underlines our commitment to advancing Singapore’s world-class transportation hub and car-lite vision,” said Lim Kell Jay, head of Grab Singapore.

Grab currently operates in 39 cities across six countries, with over 710,000 drivers in its network. Aside from Singapore, India, and Vietnam, it operates three other R&D centres in Beijing, Jakarta, and Seattle.