Earlier this year Uber sold its Southeast Asia business to Grab. At the time, it was estimated that Grab had 95% of the ride-hailing market in Southeast Asia. That’s why Uber decided to sell. Instead of continuing to bleed, they figured it would be better to instead merge businesses in exchange for a “sizeable stake in Grab.” This is similar to the deal that it struck in China with Didi.
It’s clear evidence of cultural advantage. Though maybe you could argue it’s first mover advantage. Either way, many, including Wired, have argued that while Uber has dominated in the West, it has often struggled in the developing world. Different markets. When Grab launched you could pay with cash because so many users didn’t have a credit card.
Here is another interesting insight from Bloomberg (see above): Nearly 1 out of every 5 commuters in Manila relies on a ride-hailing service because the public transit situation is allegedly so dire. Grab controls 90% of the market with 35,000 vehicles receiving somewhere around 600,000 requests a day.
When Uber launched it was positioned as “Everyone’s private driver.” It was expensive. It was luxurious. And it was done because they knew they weren’t going to be able to compete on speed and/or price in the early days. But now ride-hailing services are tackling the very opposite end of the spectrum.
Earlier this year Uber sold its Southeast Asia business to Grab. At the time, it was estimated that Grab had 95% of the ride-hailing market in Southeast Asia. That’s why Uber decided to sell. Instead of continuing to bleed, they figured it would be better to instead merge businesses in exchange for a “sizeable stake in Grab.” This is similar to the deal that it struck in China with Didi.
It’s clear evidence of cultural advantage. Though maybe you could argue it’s first mover advantage. Either way, many, including Wired, have argued that while Uber has dominated in the West, it has often struggled in the developing world. Different markets. When Grab launched you could pay with cash because so many users didn’t have a credit card.
Here is another interesting insight from Bloomberg (see above): Nearly 1 out of every 5 commuters in Manila relies on a ride-hailing service because the public transit situation is allegedly so dire. Grab controls 90% of the market with 35,000 vehicles receiving somewhere around 600,000 requests a day.
When Uber launched it was positioned as “Everyone’s private driver.” It was expensive. It was luxurious. And it was done because they knew they weren’t going to be able to compete on speed and/or price in the early days. But now ride-hailing services are tackling the very opposite end of the spectrum.
We learned things that evening and this May 24th we’ll be hosting our “pre-application community meeting.” See above for the full invite details. Lots of pre things.
At last year’s meeting we had no design. It was about learning. At this month’s meeting we will be presenting a design proposal for the site. So hopefully some of you will be able to make it out.
Regular scheduled programming will resume tomorrow on the blog.
Last week I had something delivered from Amazon almost every single day. They weren’t necessarily big things though. One day it was a new corn broom for the patio. Another day it was a small set of hooks that I wanted to hang some lights. And the list goes on.
This is what Amazon wants us to do. Order every little thing, instantly, as soon as you think about it. And it’s magically convenient.
Developers and architects are of course thinking about the implications of this shifting shopping habit on new residential developments. Usually it comes in the form of a large “Amazon room” and/or a parcel locker system.
I recently measured the package room in my building (geeky, I know). It’s about 10′ x 6′ and it sometimes isn’t enough for the volume of daily packages generated by ~360 units.
The other thing that happened last week is that my concierge said to me: “Brandon, we have become a full fledge post office with the amount of packages that come through here every day.” Every evening there’s a lineup of people waiting to collect their packages.
That immediately signaled to me that simply providing a larger room probably isn’t enough. This trend is only going to continue. How could we better design and optimize for this shift?
I am sure that there many companies working on this problem. Hopefully they will surface in the comments and in my inbox following this post.
Photo by Maarten van den Heuvel on Unsplash
We learned things that evening and this May 24th we’ll be hosting our “pre-application community meeting.” See above for the full invite details. Lots of pre things.
At last year’s meeting we had no design. It was about learning. At this month’s meeting we will be presenting a design proposal for the site. So hopefully some of you will be able to make it out.
Regular scheduled programming will resume tomorrow on the blog.
Last week I had something delivered from Amazon almost every single day. They weren’t necessarily big things though. One day it was a new corn broom for the patio. Another day it was a small set of hooks that I wanted to hang some lights. And the list goes on.
This is what Amazon wants us to do. Order every little thing, instantly, as soon as you think about it. And it’s magically convenient.
Developers and architects are of course thinking about the implications of this shifting shopping habit on new residential developments. Usually it comes in the form of a large “Amazon room” and/or a parcel locker system.
I recently measured the package room in my building (geeky, I know). It’s about 10′ x 6′ and it sometimes isn’t enough for the volume of daily packages generated by ~360 units.
The other thing that happened last week is that my concierge said to me: “Brandon, we have become a full fledge post office with the amount of packages that come through here every day.” Every evening there’s a lineup of people waiting to collect their packages.
That immediately signaled to me that simply providing a larger room probably isn’t enough. This trend is only going to continue. How could we better design and optimize for this shift?
I am sure that there many companies working on this problem. Hopefully they will surface in the comments and in my inbox following this post.
Photo by Maarten van den Heuvel on Unsplash
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