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Photo credit: Grab.

Southeast Asian ride-hailing app Grab launches a new feature: GrabHitch (Nebeng) – a service that offers ride sharing on motorcycles.

The service matches Grab drivers who commute to work with passengers who have similar routes living in cities around the Jakarta metro area such as Bekasi, Depok and Tangerang so they can go together and share the costs. Ride-sharing is colloquially known as nebeng in Indonesia.

It’s similar to UberPool – however, Uber in Indonesia so far only offers passenger pairing for its fleet of cars.

GrabHitch aims to alleviate traffic in Jakarta by reducing the number of commuting vehicles. In a press release, managing director for Grab Indonesia Ridzki Kramadibrata explains how tough Jakarta’s commute can be. Almost 70 percent of nearly 1.4 million commuters use private transportation and public transportation connecting outskirts of the Jakarta metro area to the city center is sparse. He added,

“It’s difficult to book services like taxis as most commercial drivers are concentrated in the city. GrabHitch is perfect for passengers who want a long-distance door-to-door ride, but prefer to pay more affordable prices that are in between bus or train fares and the usual taxi fare.”

GrabHitch starts at a minimum fare of US$1.54 and adds up to US$0.08 per kilometer.

Apart from affordable prices and efficiency, GrabHitch also promotes real life social networking benefits through having a commute buddy. “GrabHitch helps many of these motorbike drivers who commute alone to conveniently find passengers to share the cost of their commute, and also have someone to talk to at stops during the long journey,” said Mediko Azwar, marketing director of Grab Indonesia.

To those worried about the identity of their commute buddies, GrabHitch provides drivers and passengers options to travel with someone of the same gender and/or someone with mutual friends on Facebook, apart from familiar features like “Share My Ride” and “Driver Rating”.

GrabHitch is available for cars in other countries, but GrabHitch in Indonesia is for motorcycles only.

Converted from Indonesian rupiah. Rate: US$1 = IDR 12,988.

This post Grab introduces UberPool-like ride sharing in Indonesia – but for motorcycles appeared first on Tech in Asia.

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