Small businesses that have tapped Grab, southeast Asia’s leading everyday everything app platform, during the lockdown period March to June this year have realized at least 57 percent growth in online revenue.
In a presentation at the launch of GrabConversations, a webinar series which aims to facilitate discussions on the socio-economic contributions of the company anchored on its Social Impact report, Grab Philippines reported they have onboarded 12,000 merchants during the four-month period.
This was made possible following the launch of Grab’s Bayanihan Initiatives that aims to help its partner drivers and merchants during this health crisis.
According to Grab Philippines, 3.6 million Filipinos have been supported and protected though its Bayanihan Initiatives.
The company has pushed for several initiatives during the 4-month period in response to its data which showed that 76 percent of its merchant partners want more support in increasing their online visibility. In addition, 56 percent want tools to help them innovate and insights to grow their business and to reach more people.
Based on this, Grab responded with its Small Business Booster Program.
The Small Business Booster Program includes tools and initiatives to make it easier for offline businesses to make the shift online and helps those already on the Grab platform to expand their visibility and adapt their operations to an increasingly digital-reliant world. The program extends Grab’s long-term commitment to digitize traditional and small businesses and ensure they are included in the growing digital economy.
In the Philippines, Grab has kick-started its digitalization initiatives with a partnership with the Department of Agriculture (DA) for the eKadiwa Program as well as with the Department of Tourism for the Philippine Harvest Initiative, both initiatives aimed at connecting farmers and other rural agripreneurs to take advantage of the digital economy to reach consumers directly. Likewise, Grab has been an active supporter of the Department of Trade and Industries’ MSME Reboot Program which aims to provide digitalization support and solutions for MSMEs especially during the time of pandemic.
The company will be launching Grab Merchant to help small business in the Philippines grow online.
GrabMerchant is an all-in-one, self-serve merchant platform for business owners to help grow their online customer base, optimize their operations, while keeping costs in check. Key features include Insights and Ads manager.
The enterprise-grade Insights tool gives merchants a view into their sales, their operations, their customer profile and purchasing habits, and the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. It allows them to spot and respond quickly to new opportunities such as creating bundled meals based on what customers are ordering and equips them to address operational inefficiencies.
The Ad manager is an ads creation tool that empowers merchant-partners to build their own food banner and food search ads, and tracks the ad performance.
GrabMerchant will be available to existing Grab merchant-partners as an app and a web portal. The app will roll out progressively from June 2020, followed by the web portal by end-August 2020.
Grab will create personalized ads for over 1,000 GrabFood and GrabExpress merchant partners to drive demand to their businesses. This will translate to $3.5 million in ads value for its “homegrown heroes” across Southeast Asia.
Grab also claimed that for every ad spent, merchants realize on the average 300 percent ROI (return on investment) which is basically increase in sales.
Grab Philippines President Brian Cu noted “It is undeniable that this pandemic has high cost for everyone. So, we need a clear path on how to support loved ones.”
“We have faced many new changes and challenges brought about by the pandemic, and we continue to find ways to leverage our platform towards supporting our kababayans in many new ways. As many Filipinos rely on digital-based services, our aim at Grab is to provide meaningful support most especially to small businesses, and bridge the gap on the ever-widening digital divide that these MSMEs have been facing,” said Cu.
“With small independent businesses being the backbone of our economy, Grab hopes that by supporting initiatives such as the Department of Agriculture’s Kadiwa ni Ani at Kita, and the Department of Tourism’s Philippine Harvest Initiative - both aimed at supporting farmers and agripreneurs through market access and delivery services, as well as the Department of Trade and Industry’s MSME Reboot Program to aid and further develop our micro- and small businesses; and introducing programs such as the Madiskarteng Boss Club - geared at growing the vibrant social selling community through access to discounts, rebates, loans, placements, and learning opportunities, we get to help grow small businesses in the country to help rejuvenate our economy.”