Tag: ComfortDelGro

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Singapore’s taxi operator ComfortDelGro enables tourists from Malaysia and South Korea to use mobile wallets apps for paying fares

ComfortDelGro, a Singaporean taxi operator, announced Thursday its partnership with Alipay+, enabling tourists from Malaysia and South Korea to use their mobile wallet apps Touch ‘n Go eWallet and Kakao Pay to pay the cab fare in Singapore. 

“With Singapore reopening its borders, we are looking forward to having tourists come visit us,” said CEO of ComfortDelGro Taxi Jackson Chia. “As such, our partnership with Alipay+ is a vital one as it allows cashless payment options such as Malaysia’s Touch ‘n Go eWallet and soon South Korea’s Kakao Pay available on board ComfortDelGro taxis, making it more convenient for both Malaysian and South Korean tourists to pay for taxi fares.” 

Chia added that the partnership will offer convenient payment options without the need to exchange local currency as customers are able to pay the taxi fares upfront on their own mobile apps – Touch ‘n Go eWallet or Kakao Pay. 

Malaysia’s Touch ‘n Go is now available in Taxis, while South Korea’s Kakao Pay will be available soon. 

The number of visitors to Singapore in the first four months of 2022 already has exceeded the whole of last year, according to a report by The Straits Times. The company says Malaysia is one of the top countries where the most tourists are from, and South Korea is also an important traveler source market for Singapore. 

Singapore’s largest taxi operator, which owns a fleet of about 9,000 Comfort and City Cab taxis in the country, currently supports more than 20 different cashless payment options, while Alipay+ supports e-wallets across the globe, including the Philippines-based GCash, Thailand’s TrueMoney, Alipay Hong Kong and more. 

“Through the support and collaboration with ComfortDelGro Taxi, we aim to deliver to all users of mobile payments supported by Alipay+ a seamless and smart digital travel experience in Singapore, where they can pay with mobile wallets, they are familiar with,” said Cherry Huang, general manager of Ant Group’s global merchant partnership team in South and Southeast Asia. “This partnership also comes at a great time, as Singapore leads the way in opening up its borders and welcomes tourists back in the city-state.” 

Go-Jek is in talks with former Uber ally ComfortDelGro, Singapore’s top taxi firm

Ant Group buys Singapore’s 2C2P to further global payments ambitions

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Portugal’s ‘Predictive maintenance’ startup Stratio pulls in a $12M Series A round led by Forestay

The fleet management industry needs to be able to predict when a truck or a van is about to break down. Not only does this prevent millions in lost revenues, it also has huge implications for supply chains. ‘Predictive maintenance’ is one of those spaces in which you will find several incumbent companies, such as BOSCH, and WABCO which offerer existing, “legacy” solutions.

In 2019 Stratio emerged from Portugal to tackle this issue with a combined hardware-under-thehood and AI approach to help OEMs, distributors and fleets. Its AI-based predictive fleet maintenance is designed to prevent things like public transportation delays or postponed/late arrival of deliveries.

It’s now raised a $12 million Series A funding round led by Forestay — the Deep Tech and SaaS Venture Capital arm of Waypoint Capital — with participation from existing investor Crane Venture Partners.

Stratio has so far secured several large transportation companies as customers, including Ford Trucks, Arriva, Keolis, RATP Dev, Go-Ahead, ComfortDelGro and claims its ARR has grown 2,700% since its Seed investment round.

Said Ricardo Margalho, CEO, commented: “Real-time predictive fleet maintenance provides a magnified look that leads to better planning and better decisions. That means higher quality and cheaper public transportation, on-time deliveries while serving more customers at a lower cost. Stratio’s technology is empowering fleet operators across the globe by providing them the most comprehensive and easy-to-manage platform in this space.”

Stratio’s technology also has an impact on the transition to zero-emissions for transportation companies because fully electric fleets require greater initial capital investment when compared to standard internal combustion vehicles, so transportation services must operate vehicles for longer and more intensively to make the initial outlay pay-back.

Frederic Wohlwend, Managing Partner at Forestay said: “Stratio’s technology fascinated us right from the beginning. Not only are they far advanced in terms of datasets uniqueness – which virtually allow them to work with any fleet across the globe – but they also have been growing at an incredible pace.”

Where Stratio says it has an edge over other players is that can deal with a great many different vehicle types, automakers’ brands, models etc.

Margalho told me: “We have spent 5 years researching and developing machine learning techniques – in the last two years alone 65% of our budget went directly to into R&D – for predictive maintenance while automating vehicle data interpretation. This means we can deploy our technology across all types of fleets while typically leveraging 10x times more parameters (data – temperatures, pressures, etc) from all the different components and systems.”

The result for customers is that the platform immediately becomes mission-critical, says Margalho: “This is the equivalent of X-rays in healthcare – you just can’t imagine going back to doing surgery without it. It’s a complete game-changer in this industry.”

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Go-Jek is close to launching a ride-hailing service in Singapore

Indonesia’s ride-sharing startup Go-Jek plans to land in Singapore, its arch-rival Grab’s HQ, as soon as this month as its regional expansion program gains speed, TechCrunch has come to understand.

Go-Jek has grown to become a $5 billion business that’s backed by the likes of Google and Tencent without venturing out of Indonesia, where it original motorbike taxi-hailing app has fanned out to cover cars, on-demand services, payments and more. But it decided to expand in Southeast Asia following Uber’s exit from the region in March, landing first in Vietnam and then Thailand, where it has recruited drivers and is close to commencing its service.

Singapore — a far smaller market but one that’s hugely symbolic — is on its radar and Go-Jek plans to introduce a service in the country before the end of October, a source with knowledge of the plans told TechCrunch.

Exactly what that’ll look like isn’t clear. Unlike Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand, Singapore doesn’t allow motorbike taxis so the company will be launching cars right off the bat. Go-Jek remains in discussions with ComfortDelGro, Singapore’s largest taxi operator which previously had an agreement with Uber, but it may also launch its own private car service to rival Grab directly.

Go-Jek is currently in discussions with investors with a view to raising $2 billion to finance the next stage of its expansion.

Grab was founded in Malaysia but it has since moved its headquarters to Singapore where it is registered as a business. The company was recently valued at $11 billion following the completion of a $2 billion financing round.

Consumers have complained about a lack of options following Uber’s exit and Singapore’s regulators fined Uber and Grab over its “anti-competitive” merger deal, but Grab co-founder Hooi Ling Tan has maintained there’s plenty of competition. Certainly, her statement will ring truer when Go-Jek cars are driving around on Grab’s front lawn.

Posted on

Go-Jek is close to launching a ride-hailing service in Singapore

Indonesia’s ride-sharing startup Go-Jek plans to land in Singapore, its arch-rival Grab’s HQ, as soon as this month as its regional expansion program gains speed, TechCrunch has come to understand.

Go-Jek has grown to become a $5 billion business that’s backed by the likes of Google and Tencent without venturing out of Indonesia, where it original motorbike taxi-hailing app has fanned out to cover cars, on-demand services, payments and more. But it decided to expand in Southeast Asia following Uber’s exit from the region in March, landing first in Vietnam and then Thailand, where it has recruited drivers and is close to commencing its service.

Singapore — a far smaller market but one that’s hugely symbolic — is on its radar and Go-Jek plans to introduce a service in the country before the end of October, a source with knowledge of the plans told TechCrunch.

Exactly what that’ll look like isn’t clear. Unlike Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand, Singapore doesn’t allow motorbike taxis so the company will be launching cars right off the bat. Go-Jek remains in discussions with ComfortDelGro, Singapore’s largest taxi operator which previously had an agreement with Uber, but it may also launch its own private car service to rival Grab directly.

Go-Jek is currently in discussions with investors with a view to raising $2 billion to finance the next stage of its expansion.

Grab was founded in Malaysia but it has since moved its headquarters to Singapore where it is registered as a business. The company was recently valued at $11 billion following the completion of a $2 billion financing round.

Consumers have complained about a lack of options following Uber’s exit and Singapore’s regulators fined Uber and Grab over its “anti-competitive” merger deal, but Grab co-founder Hooi Ling Tan has maintained there’s plenty of competition. Certainly, her statement will ring truer when Go-Jek cars are driving around on Grab’s front lawn.

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Go-Jek kicks off Southeast Asia expansion with Vietnam launch

Go-Jek, the Indonesia-based ride-sharing company valued at $5 billion, has begun its ambitious plan to increase its rivalry with Grab by expanding into three new markets after it opened shop in Vietnam.

The service — which is known as Go-Viet — covers an initial 12 districts in Ho Chi Minh City with a motorbike on-demand service. Rival Grab is in five cities in Vietnam and its services include motorbikes, taxis, private cars and food delivery.

The August 1 Vietnam launch as TechCrunch reported in June. The plan is to then expand into Thailand in September, and the Philippines before the end of this year. Singapore remains a market that Go-Jek would like to enter — it has held partnership talks with taxi operator ComfortDelGro — but it remains unclear whether, and when, that might happen.

Go-Jek expansion plan will put some heat on Grab, which has occupied a near-dominant position across Southeast Asia since it acquired Uber’s local business back in March.

Unlike Grab, though, Go-Jek is taking a very local approach to each market. Not only will it use a local name in each country — in Thailand it will be called “Get” — it has hired local ‘founder’ teams who will be responsible for service offerings and other local business aspects. It isn’t clear how closely they will work with the core Go-Jek team in Indonesia.

That may mean anyone traveling between countries will need to download local Go-Jek apps, which is in contrast to Grab, which offers a single app for eight countries in Southeast Asia.

Valued at $10 billion, Grab has raised over $5 billion from investors, including its most recent $1 billion investment from Toyota. Go-Jek has pulled in just over $2 billion. Tencent, Google, Meituan and others participated in its most recent (estimated) $1.4 billion raise which closed earlier this year.