Comments
Singapore-headquartered ride-hailing platform Grab on Wednesday announced the opening of an R&D centre in Bengaluru. It has hired Raghuram Trikutam to head Engineering and Mobile Payments, and Ruchika Sharma to head HR.
The new centre has the capacity to house up to 200 engineers, but the company did not specify how many of them will be hired. However, the firm said it is looking to ‘significantly’ expand its global R&D capabilities and double its R&D centres to six.
The company said it will add 800 new R&D jobs in the next two years across the six R&D centres in Bengaluru, Beijing, Jakarta, Vietnam, Singapore and Seattle.
Further, executives said the engineers in Bengaluru will focus on developing new payments technologies for GrabPay, Grab’s digital payments platform.
“Bengaluru has established itself as the Silicon Valley of India and one of the global hubs in mobile technology,” said Arul Kumaravel, Vice-President of Engineering at Grab.
The opening of the Bengaluru centre fits in a broader regional investment for Grab.
Distributed teamsWith the setting up of the Bengaluru centre, Grab is looking to enhance its model of distributed engineering teams to access specific expertise in each of its R&D centres around the world, such as machine learning, predictive data analytics, mobile-first technology and bettering user experience.
“South-East Asia is developing at a breakneck pace and we have an unprecedented opportunity to deliver a platform that caters to the region’s mobile-first environment and infrastructural needs, which requires a combination of deep local understanding and engineering,” said Trikutam.
Grab operates in 35 cities across six countries, with over 7,10,000 drivers in its network, and 36 million mobile downloads, according to company executives.
The expansion will support Grab’s rapidly growing multi-modal transport platform and proprietary payments system across South-East Asia, which includes the launch of three new transport services in the last quarter — GrabShare, GrabCoach and GrabShuttle — as well as the roll-out of GrabRewards, a customer loyalty programme.
Comments
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.