Grab adds experiences to its offering

Grab is adding experiences to its ‘super app’ offering in a bid to appeal to experience-seeking millennials.

The ride-hailing app will partner with retail, entertainment and food-and-beverage brands to offer  online-to-offline experiences including events, products and activities. The first experiences it will offer include culinary and lifestyle experience Gourmet Tribe, and Singapore’s first bubble-tea subscription.

The new service was developed off the back of a study commissioned by Grab and conducted by YouGov, which found that 89% of Singaporean millennials value experiences more than material possessions. Two-thirds are willing to spend more on a lifestyle app if it is enhanced with more lifestyle experiences, such as access to specially curated events, live gigs, limited edition items, or even one-of-a-kind experiences, the study found.

The offering was revealed at an experiential event on Thursday (3 October) attended by media and influencers. The event featured several live experiences for attendees to get involved in, including popiah making, cocktail making and ‘gourmet’ food tasting.

Speaking to Campaign Asia-Pacific at the event, Grab Singapore head of marketing Gillian Ang explained: “We see ourselves as the everyday super app. People open our app multiple times a day, they use our app for transport, food delivery—functional stuff. We have the ability to help the users of our app to do much more: discover things around them, sign up for different experiences and curated events.”

“It also gives us an opportunity to add differentiation into the mix, and add to the life of our customers,” she added.

This is the latest move from Grab to position itself as a ‘super app’ that wraps several services into one. Originally conceived as a ride-hailing service, Grab has expanded into several other sectors over its seven-year history, including food delivery, mobile payments and entertainment, among others.

Grab is also launching a #GrabForGood programme, that will give users a chance to donate their GrabRewards points to Alson Wang, a GrabFood delivery-partner and para-athlete with cerebral palsy who will be participating in the Relay Majulah Challenge for charity. The campaign is open till 14 October. Every 800 point donation will contribute S$2 to Alson’s cause and Grab will match the contribution dollar-for-dollar.

The social cause initiative was also informed by the results of the YouGov study, which found that Singaporean millennials value giving back to society, with 4 in 5 currently contributing to a
social cause.