Grab: Is ‘The Competition’ competition enough?

Grab’s competitors, Ryde and Jugnoo, have been in town for slightly under a month. TISG checked in to see how they have fared thus far, especially in waters dominated by Grab.

When asked about general updates on Jugnoo’s progress, their CEO and Founder, Samar Singla said that they “have been pleasantly surprised on the reception to the product”.

“We have 1000 drivers who signed up, 500 have been approved. 6000 customer signups so far. Better than our expectations”, he added.

Terrence Zou, Founder and CEO of RYDE Technologies, said that Ryde has “made carpooling a success for the first time in Singapore. RydeX, its latest private-hire service, has also generated encouraging results with more than 10,000 successful matches within 2 weeks after launch”.

While Terence advised on their global statistics, he did not comment on their numbers in Singapore.

Meanwhile, Grab is back with their exorbitant fare hikes and inconsistencies when it comes to using the app.

Early Monday morning, a ride from Block 77 of Marine Parade to Yio Chu Kang road saw Grab fares going as high as SGD 41, while Ryde was only at SGD14.30 at the same time.

However, on the Grab app, if the ride was booked from Block 78 of Marine Parade to the same point in Yio Chu Kang, the fare came up to SGD17 only. Rather confusing. For android users as well, the Grab app was unable to show local roads even with an address keyed in, where the default map was the world map. It is not clear if these issues have been rectified.

When it comes to pricing, at this point, Ryde and Jugnoo seem to be a lot more reasonable, with Jugnoo even applying for a patent on their reverse-bidding pricing system.

While Ryde and Jugnoo still seem a little young and inexperienced in the market, progress is still progress.

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