Uber’s new Southeast Asia owner Grab rolls out UberEats-like service

By: Joey

GrabFood is based on Uber’s food delivery platform.

When Uber sold its Southeast Asia business to Grab in March, UberEats was part of the deal. Now, the Southeast Asian ride-hailing king has built on the service to launch its own food delivery platform.

Called GrabFood, the service will be made available in Singapore first before launching in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam “within this quarter,” Grab announced at a media briefing on Monday morning. The beta service now boasts “thousands” of merchants.

Like UberEats, there is no minimum order requirement you have to make, although James Ong, head of GrabFood Singapore, added that the feature could be offered only to selected customers in the future.

In Singapore, GrabFood’s rivals such as Deliveroo and FoodPanda require you to make a minimum order or pay the difference in order to checkout.

GrabFood will also give you five GrabRewards points for every dollar spent on each order, which the company said can be used to redeem rides and other discounts.

The company’s newest addition is part of efforts to build an “everyday app” offering “complementary services on one platform,” said Lim Kell Jay, head of Grab Singapore.

“GrabFood is a major milestone in our journey to becoming the everyday app for consumers,” added Ong.