Updated (April 13th): Due to popular demand, Grab is extending its “RM1 Rides” promotion until April 17th, 2016.
It seems like GrabCar has been operating in other Malaysian cities before, but it turns out that wasn’t the case, until now. Grab, the company, (formerly known as MyTeksi in Malaysia) just launched its GrabCar service in Johor Bahru on April 7th 2016, making GrabCar available outside of Klang Valley for the first time in Malaysia. To celebrate this occasion, all GrabCar rides paid by credit/debit card will get a RM6 discount from April 7th until April 13th, 2016.
GrabCar Johor
Jaygan Fu, Country Manager of Grab Malaysia who was present at Johor Bahru during the launch, said, “Johor Bahru is poised for great development and we see an avenue for us to introduce our services as an affordable alternative transportation option to the people of Johor Bahru.”
Fu went on to add that GrabCar adopts the safety aspects of its MyTeksi service, like stringent background checks on drivers, inspection for cars beyond six years old, 24/7 customers service for both drivers and passengers, emergency PDRM (police) button for drivers, and location sharing button for passengers.
Fu added that GrabCar also has additional safety facets not found elsewhere, “In addition, GrabCar also recently introduced insurance policy that covers both passengers and drivers and to top it off, our top performing female drivers are part of a pilot in-car CCTV initiative to enhance the safety of both passengers and drivers.”
RM1 for the first 5km / RM6 discount
One way GrabCar is unique from other taxi services, is that GrabCar rides have at fixed fare, once the pick-up and drop-off points have been selected. Recently, GrabCar rides also began accepting credit and debit card payments (called GrabPay). These two features further add to the peace of mind for riders who are already enjoying the convenience of easily booking rides from their smartphones. Fu commented on this, “This means regardless of traffic conditions, passengers will know their fares up front and have the convenience of doing away with the cumbersomeness of rummaging for cash to pay for the ride.”
To celebrate the launch of GrabCar in Johor Bahru, or more like, to get more people to enter their credit card details to the Grab app, Grab is offering RM1 GrabCar rides (in both Klang Valley and Johor Bahru) for the first 5 kilometers, from April 7th until the 13th, 2016. GrabCar has a fixed fare of RM7 for for the first 5km, so that means no matter where you’re going, you’ll get an RM6 discount.
There is no catch to this offer really, except that you’ll need a credit or debit card for this. Also, no promo codes are required. Simply install the app on Android or iOS, launch it, register an account, and enter your credit or debit card details. After that, all GrabCar rides you book from the ‘GrabCar (RM1 Ride)’ tab from now until April 13th 2016, will have an RM6 discount. There is also no limit to this offer, so in this one week, you can grab as many GrabCars as you like and will still enjoy the RM6 discount. Note that this offer is only for the economy GrabCar ride, but not for the more premium GrabCar+.
Fu concluded, “Since our inception, GrabCar also always sought opportunities to provide safe and reliable alternative options of transportation with the equal assurance of speed and certainty of vehicle. And in view of recent economic circumstances, we are also taking affordability of rides into serious consideration as well.”
Wrap-up
For those who are unaware, GrabCar is a relatively-new ride-hailing service that’s launched in Malaysia on May 2014, months after UberBLACK was available in KL, and months before uberX arrived here. While GrabCar is an economy ride, similar to uberX, GrabCar+ that was launched a year later in June 2015, is a more premium ride, much like UberBLACK. Since then, Uber has been available in Ipoh, Johor Bahru, and Penang as well. Here’s hoping that Grab won’t rest on its laurels and will continue to expand GrabCar to the other two major cities in the Peninsular in the coming months.
Grab’s service is now available in six countries, all of them in Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam). Grab began as MyTeksi (GrabTaxi) in Malaysia back in 2012, and has since moved its headquarters to Singapore. Besides GrabTaxi and GrabCar, the company now has other services like motorcycle cabs (GrabBike), social carpooling (GrabHitch) and last-mile freight (GrabExpress), but alas, these three are not available in Malaysia yet.
For more information on Grab, visit http://www.grab.com/.
The post RM6 off GrabCar rides for a week to celebrate launch in Johor Bahru [updated] appeared first on TechAttack.my.