Food Delivery Service Grab Expands Subscription Program as Users Seek Deals

Southeast Asian super app service Grab will expand its pilot subscription program called GrabUnlimited to more of its markets, saying the response from users has been encouraging.

Grab provides food and parcel delivery, mobility and digital financial services in eight countries in Southeast Asia, and its GrabUnlimited offers subscriber benefits and deals across those services, the company said in a Thursday (Aug. 25) earnings release.

“We have seen early encouraging metrics from GrabUnlimited in terms of increasing user engagement and order frequency,” the company said in the release. “We believe GrabUnlimited has the potential to strengthen our [super app] ecosystem by improving engagement and stickiness with users and be a key differentiator for us from monoline food delivery or mobility companies.”

With the subscription program, Grab aims to encourage the already growing engagement of customers with its services. The company reported in a presentation released along with the earnings call that 34% of its monthly transacting users (MTUs) used three or more of its offerings in the second quarter, up from the 27% who did so in 2021.

During the quarter, Grab also implemented new measures to improve its delivery service. The company worked to reduce driver waiting times at food merchant outlets and introduced a new feature that lets customers choose the window of time for delivery, including windows that have lower delivery fees, the release stated.

At the same time, the company said a trend toward dining out has been moderating the demand for food delivery, and it expects that to continue.

Grab also reported that the demand for mobility continues to recover, and it’s now reached about 67% of the demand seen in the fourth quarter of 2019, before COVID-19 began affecting the market.

In June, Grab also launched a new enterprise service for mapping and location-based services called GrabMaps, saying it offers a cost-efficient, hyperlocal mapping solution.

“We plan to expand GrabMaps as a B2B solution, to help other organizations with their location intelligence needs,” the company said in the release.