When Uber stormed into Southeast Asia, it looked unbeatable—until local competitor Grab seized the lead. Want to know how Grab beat Uber? Here are six powerful strategies every business owner can learn from their triumph over a global giant.

Key Highlights
✅ Know your market.
Grab offered cash and bank payments—perfect for a region where credit cards weren’t common.
✅ Pivot fast.
They rebranded from MyTeksi and evolved from a taxi app into a full ride-sharing platform.
✅ Stand for something.
Grab positioned itself as the safest way to travel, solving a real concern.
✅ Grow sustainably.
While Uber grew fast, Grab played the long game and built trust.
✅ Partner locally.
They teamed up with local businesses to expand smarter, not just bigger.
✅ Lead with purpose.
Their focus on safety, accessibility, and transparency made all the difference.

Big or small, your business can grow like Grab by knowing your market, adapting fast, and staying true to your purpose.

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Franziska: Hello, and welcome back to Basic Bananas TV. I am here in a Grab, not an Uber, in Kuala Lumpur. I’m here for a board meetin,g and I wanted to share something interesting with you because I think there are so many lessons we can get from this.

So I was just having lunch here and opened the Uber app to get an Uber back to the hotel and open the app. And there was nothing in there, no rides available. So I asked the waiter, I said, hey, do you not use Uber so much here anymore in Kuala Lumpur. And he said, No, it’s really hard to get Ubers. We use Grab, G R A B. And so I thought, interesting. So I looked up exactly what happened here because. Because again, there’s so much we can learn. So what happened is that. So Uber, or Uber, as you guys probably say, entered the market in 2014 and had really fast growth here in Southeast Asia.

Grab, a local company founded by two Harvard graduates, started two years earlier. However, it started as an app called MyTeksi. Like My Taxi, but MyTeksi, which was a very simple taxi booking app to bring more safety and more transparency into the cab scene here. And then Uber entered the market, and they realised that they had to pivot very fast. So that’s exactly what they did. They changed the name from MyTeksi to Grab.

They also changed the app from being just a taxi booking app to now being a ride sharing app, same as Uber. And they changed, adapted more to the local market because they are also a local company. And so they offered more different types of payments. For example, you can connect your bank account to the app so that if you don’t have a credit card, you can still pay or you can pay cash. So in a country where credit cards weren’t as widespread as now, that was of course a big in favour for what they’re doing. The other thing that they did, and I’m on their website here right now, is they had and still have very clear positioning and what they say is that they are the safest way to travel in Southeast Asia. And again, this was in a time when Uber had a little bit of safety issues. Other taxis had sometimes a little bit of safety issues.

They positioned themselves as the safe option and still no. And so what happened a few years later in 2018, Uber. There were lots of battles between Grab and Uber. Uber exited the market in 2018 and sold to Grab for a stake in Nemesis across all of Southeast Asia. So lots to learn here for business owners. So number one, know your market better than your competitors. That’s exactly what Grab did with the payment options and just really understanding the local market. They changed. They even changed their name. Not that you have to do that, but they even changed their name. They adapted really fast. Number three is they Uber came in and they grew really fast. Grab had long, long, sort of slow, steady, sustainable growth. Number four, especially if you do, number one, which is understand the market really well. And number five is So just really understanding what exactly you’re doing, what is the purpose of your business. For them it was about safety and accessibility and transparency. And I would add six. Number six, which is They’ve done really good partnerships with local companies. That has really helped them to also grow here in Southeast Asia. So lots to learn here from the Uber versus Grab war. And now Grab is the most popular ride sharing app here in Kuala Lumpur. So interesting story. I thought you might enjoy hearing that one too.