With backing from Japan’s SoftBank, GrabTaxi is one of Uber’s biggest competitors in Asia and if it wants to continue being so it needs to start diversifying and expanding its offerings. In order to do this, the company is testing out a next-day delivery service known as Parcel-Document in Bangkok. Should this actually launch, this would certainly bolster the taxi-hailing company’s offerings.
GrabTaxi, the Uber rival backed by SoftBank, is trialling a next-day delivery service as it experiments with logistics-related offerings beyond its core taxi-hailing business in Southeast Asia. The ‘Parcel-Document’ service quietly went live in Bangkok, Thailand, this week in partnership with e-commerce company AlphaFAST. GrabTaxi customers can summon a courier inside the GrabTaxi application in the same way that they’d order a taxi (see below). The document will be delivered the next day if booked before 3pm. It is initially charged at a flat rate: paperwork and documents cost 35 THB (just over $1), while parcels are 35 THB to 70 THB based on size. GrabTaxi works with regular taxis and limousine private hire cars for its GrabTaxi and GrabCar services, but the company is using AlphaFAST’s fleet of scooters for this pilot.
