KUALA LUMPUR (Nov 7): Ride hailing services provider, Grab Inc, surpassed the one billionth mark with 66 concurrent rides in one second across all seven of its markets in Southeast Asia: Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Myanmar.

Describing its ridership growth to have been accelerating rapidly this year, Grab said the pace demonstrates the on-demand transport’s enormous untapped potential in Southeast Asia, and how its multi-modal, hyper-local approach, as well as its world-class technology, have enabled it to capture the increasing demand.

“This milestone is a great testament to the strength of Grab’s business and our management team that we have dramatically increased the size of our business in such a short time and not only maintained the same great service — but improved it by continuing to innovate our business, solve local problems and change lives through technology,” Grab Co-Founder and chief executive officer Anthony Tan said in a statement.

“I’m immensely grateful to all our driver-partners, passengers, investors and partners for their support, and the incredible Grab team that has managed this massive scale-up together,” he added.

Tan said Grab is also making a big leap to enable GrabPay beyond transport and making digital and financial inclusion possible for everyone in Southeast Asia.

“We are now looking forward to soon serving our billionth transaction in GrabPay,” he said.

According to Grab, the one billion ride milestone builds on a series of major upgrades to Grab’s research and development (R&D), as well as technological capabilities as the platform rapidly scales up to meet dramatically increasing demand from driver-partners and passengers.

To this, Grab said it had recently roped in Theo Vassilakis as the Chief Technology Officer. In addition, Grab said it had doubled the number of its R&D centres from three to six, with new centres in Bangalore, India; Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; and Jakarta, Indonesia.

With presence across 7 countries and 142 cities throughout Southeast Asia, Grab offers private car, motorbike, taxi, and carpooling services with one out of every three passengers using multiple services.

Grab said it boasts a 95% share in third-party taxi-hailing market, and 72% in private vehicle hailing, with the largest land fleet in Southeast Asia.

It also has over 2 million driver partners who earn up to 55% more than national average hourly wages on its platform.

In terms of its popularity, Grab is also one of the most frequently-used mobile platforms in the region, with over 3.5 million daily rides, while the Grab application has been downloaded onto more than 68 million mobile devices.

According to TNS, a global market research firm, Grab is the brand that is used most often in Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, compared with other ride-hailing apps and taxi booking apps.