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The Super App Reality: What Works, What Doesn’t and What’s Next
Philipp Kandal, Chief Product Officer, Grab
Moderated by Sarah Kopit, Skift
THE ARGUMENT
Grab, a popular Southeast Asian superapp that offers ride-hailing, food delivery, and financial services in a single platform, said its edge is not scale, but strategically removing friction from travel. Grab built its own maps to optimize for motorbike trips (which delivery workers use but global providers routinely ignore), embedded cross-border QR payments so travelers can pay at street stalls, and deployed language translations that help when giving taxi drivers directions. Competitors can’t easily copy these hyper-local tools. Kandal is trying to expand carefully, defining Grab’s lane as curated, complementary legs — the airport ride, the ferry connection, the ad hoc hotel extension — rather than the full itinerary booking.
THE EVIDENCE
- Airport trips now surpass 10% of Grab’s mobility GMV (gross merchandise value): “What’s the first experience most people have when they land in Asia? … That’s kind of where the experience for landing a new city for most people starts,” said Kandal.
- One in 15 Southeast Asian users use the app monthly, with Grab operating over 1,000 AI models across the app, covering pricing, feed ranking, and language translation.
- Grab’s merchant AI coach advises millions of sellers on pricing, promotions, and menu adjustments to give every merchant “a key account manager” at scale.
- “One of the hardest parts of running a Super App is understanding what you should and what you shouldn’t do,” said Kandal.
THE SO WHAT
Even for superapps, mindless growth at all costs can be a trap that’s hard to defend, while strategic, careful expansion aligning with a travel company’s mission is a moat. In Southeast Asia, businesses built on a strong hyper-local focus and regional expertise have an edge over companies that rely on generic tools — standard mapping, payments, language infrastructure — because their products won’t break at the street level.
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