Grab Holdings Limited launched GrabMaps today (June 6), touting it as a hyperlocal mapping solution for its super-app verticals.
Moving away from third-party mapping providers, Grab said that it first developed GrabMaps as an in-house solution to address mapping issues unique to the region.
For instance:
"The back alleys and narrow side streets common across Southeast Asia cities often don’t show up on conventional maps, but are navigated by our driver and delivery partners every day," said Grab's co-founder Tan Hooi Ling.
Issues like this prompted the tech company to develop its own technology -- GrabMaps -- using company-based mapping. It is constantly refreshed by data gleaned from Grab users, driver-partners, and merchants.
And it's a lot of data. During the launch of the GrabMaps at Grab's headquarters today, Philip Kandal, Head of Geo, Grab said that regionally, Grab sees 500,000 GPS pings per second or about two terabytes of data every day.
Selected driver-partners and delivery partners (like cyclists) can also contribute data like points of interest, street imagery, street names, and traffic signs for additional income.
Selected driver or delivery partners are issued cameras like this (termed Kartacam) to record images for GrabMaps. Image courtesy of Grab.
GrabMaps also provides 360-degree imagery thanks to this fancy four-sided Kartacam right here:
Image by Joshua Lee.
Today, GrabMaps provides location-based intelligence and services to all Grab verticals in all the eight countries it operates in except for Indonesia. Grab expects to be fully self-sufficient with GrabMaps by the third quarter of this year.
Aside from using this mapping technology for its own services, Grab is only offering GrabMaps as a service to other businesses.
For now, businesses can license map data covering capital cities to tier 3 towns in Southeast Asia. The data available for licensing includes more than 33 million points of interest; roads, including turn restrictions, speed limits, toll gantries; and high-resolution street-level imagery.
Businesses can also use GrabMap's map-making tools, powered by its proprietary Kartacam technology.
In the future, Grab plans to offer GrabMaps application programming interface (APIs) and mobile software development kits (SDKs) as a tool for developers to enhance their own apps.
Post-launch, I booked a Grab ride back, and I asked my driver for his opinion about the mapping technology in his Grab driver app. He confirmed the accuracy of GrabMaps, though he wished that it would provide alerts on speed traps, which is a feature on Waze.
Who knows? Maybe one day, Grab users and drivers can look forward to that level of crowdsourced detail.
Top images via Grab.