According to a recent report, perhaps the most renowned ride-hailing company in Southeast Asia has announced the launch of its new Regional Centre of Excellence (RCoE) in its recently expanded 54,000-square-foot office space today.
The Centre of Excellence will house the company’s core business strategy and operational functions, including legal, customer experience financial services and creative services.
This announcement has quickly followed the recent news of the firm’s launch of an R&D Centre in Malaysia, the 7th in the company’s global R&D footprint. The centre is a part of their bid to access and grow Malaysia’s tech talent pool.
The launch was officiated by the Minister of International Trade and Industry. By launching its RCoE and R&D Centre in Malaysia, the firm looks to create at least 400 new jobs. This brings the company’s total Malaysian employee count to 1,000.
The RCoE will spearhead the development of an in-house pool of professionals. With the firm’s presence in 336 cities across 8 countries, they get to access a regional perspective in offering solutions and implementing projects.
This office launches as part of the company’s efforts to contribute to Malaysia’s National Policy on Industry 4.0 (Industry4WRD) and the National e-Commerce Strategic Roadmap (NeSR) to “attract, create and transform”.
Part of this push consists of attracting key enabling technologies to create the right digital ecosystem; transforming the manufacturing and services sectors into “agile sectors”, and achieving greater economic prosperity and societal well-being.
The company’s commitments to Malaysia’s Industry 4.0 blueprint will include contributions such as:
- Shared, seamless and smart mobility solution for all:With a range of transportation services available on their platform, the firm will be working closely with governments, public and private transportation providers to serve the first-mile-last-mile transportation needs of Malaysians.
- Better livelihoods and income-earning opportunities for driver-partners:the firm will continue to work on offering more income-earning opportunities, financial support, better technology tools and skills training, and more community activities for them.
- Digital shop fronts its various merchant partners: the firm will enable micro-entrepreneurs and small and medium-sized businesses to set up their digital presence on its app and leverage their user base and distribution network to earn better business revenue.
- Access to the firm’s platform to help like-minded start-ups and partners scale their business:Partners can either build their services into the company’s platform or integrate Grab’s technology and products into their own websites or apps.
As Malaysia is where the firm was founded almost seven years ago with the simple goal of solving the problem of transportation safety, the Head of the firm’s Malaysian arm explained that it was natural for them to decide to contribute back to the country where they first started.
The Head also noted that there is a lot more that the firm plans can do to improve the daily lives of fellow Malaysians, and the company aims to partner closely with the Malaysian government to develop win-win regulations and policies that allow innovation to thrive, and best serve the interests of the larger Malaysian population.
