
Grab is acquiring Uber's SE Asia business - gringoDan
http://www.zdnet.com/article/grab-buy-uber-southeast-asia/
======
Roedou
I was in Manila last month, and mostly took Uber; the experience was exactly
like using it in the US.

I took one Grab ride, and the experience couldn't have been more different. I
booked the ride on Grab, and saw the car coming towards me on the map. Just as
it arrived, the driver waved to me out of his car, and then canceled the ride
in the app. The car & licence plate were completely different to the one shown
in the app.

Next to the driver was sat his friend, who talked to me throughout the 10
minute ride, and gave me his cards in case I needed to book a hotel or ride on
my next visit.

When we arrived, I gave cash to the driver (the amount that the app had priced
it at originally) and bolted. I couldn't leave any feedback in the app,
because the canceled ride had disappeared.

It's hard to tell if this is a one-off weird experience, or a typical Grab
ride. Either way, it made me unlikely to want to use it again, and I was
planning to go back to Uber on my next trip to SE Asia.

~~~
yladiz
It might have been a Manila thing, but when I was in Bangkok I used Grab
pretty often (maybe 5 times per week for a month) and I never had an
experience like that. I had some experiences where drivers would only go to a
certain part of the street, but in general it felt like Uber or Lyft in the
states, plus I enjoy the UX a little better than Uber.

~~~
sdm
Yes, my experience is the same. Grab is my go to "taxi" app when I'm in SEA.
I've always found it's drivers to be more reliable and more professional than
Uber's. And the app is no where as confusing as Uber's. The big problem with
Uber is that it's all tied to your phone number. But the first thing you do
when travelling is pick up a SIM card for the country you're in. Grab is tied
to either FB or Google login so you can just easily log in and update your
phone number.

(I haven't been to Manila, so I'm not sure what it's like there.)

------
cheriot
Dividing up the world into monopolies that's vaguely reminiscent of the
Merchant Kings[1].

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Merchant-Kings-Companies-
Ruled-1600-1...](https://www.amazon.com/Merchant-Kings-Companies-
Ruled-1600-1900/dp/0312616112)

------
sithadmin
Yikes. Not really looking forward to this. I've always found Grab to be pretty
sketchy and unreliable compared to Uber when traveling in SE Asia.

------
Pyxl101
FYI: Grab is the company that Steve Yegge moved to. He wrote about leaving his
last company for it in a recent blog post:

[https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/why-i-left-google-to-join-
gr...](https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/why-i-left-google-to-join-
grab-86dfffc0be84)

~~~
bogomipz
I'm interested in why that is relevant to the story?

Also can you please explain to me why Steve Yegge is so important? You
obviously felt this point was important enough to mention.

~~~
geofft
It seems relevant to HN's discussion of the story, because his blog post about
leaving Google for Grab got 311 points + 182 comments
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16220666](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16220666)
, and a mainstream media article about that blog post got another 180 points +
89 comments
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16226439](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16226439)
. (It looks like you commented on both threads.)

I don't read the comment above is a reflection of Steve Yegge's importance in
general, just as a useful piece of information linking this news to something
HN previously thought was important (his move to Grab).

~~~
ocdtrekkie
It's also likely that many others here, like me, only heard of Grab in the
first place, because of the Yegge post.

------
gok
So Uber gets 30% of a monopoly instead of 100% of a business in a competitive
market? Good trade.

~~~
aetherson
20%, not 30%.

As always, for Uber, you have to understand their moves in the context of
their valuation. Uber has raised money at a $70B valuation (although their
most recent fundraising was at a mere $50B). They did that on the promise that
they would get big, somehow raise unit margin, and become a business that
would eventually turn not just _profits_ , but _profits commensurate with
their valuation_.

Profits commensurate with their valuation are probably somewhere in the $5B to
$10B per year range, once they're no longer growing that much. If all of SE
Asia contributes only a couple hundred million to those profits -- even if
those profits are nearly risk-free -- then that's not wonderful for Uber (or
at least to Uber's investors).

And more so, signals that say "We will not be able to establish stable high
market share alongside stable high profit in many markets" are _really bad_
for Uber's prospects for raising money.

------
moltar
Terrible news. From my experience Grab’s UX and driver ed was much worse than
Uber’s.

