Grab is teaming up with Indonesian developer Sinar Mas Land to cultivate digital infrastructure in Greater Jakarta’s BSD City, which is about half the size of Paris and will be Indonesia’s first digital city. Grab will provide smart and clean transportation in the community, support the growth of micro and small business, as well as drive technology developments within BSD City.
“This is a long-awaited collaboration. And challenging too, because it is certainly not easy to build a community, let alone a city. Therefore, this partnership does not only aim to provide convenience for the people’s daily lives but also supports the government in building a better society,” said Ridzki Kramadibrata, president of Grab Indonesia, during the MOU signing ceremony.
“BSD City is not only a residential area, but also a hub of lifestyle, entertainment, and education with many SMEs, which makes a mature ecosystem. Grab’s role here is to contribute technology that is our core strength to give bigger impact on BSD City and its communities,” Kramadibrata added.
Grab will establish an Innovation and Engineering Lab in BSD City for several collaborative projects, including a system that will map BSD City to define efficient pickup and drop-off points for passengers.
“We believe that mapping accuracy is a very crucial matter of transportation technology. At Grab, we have 250 engineers that focus on machine learning mapping,” Kramadibrata said. “Good mapping can also help manage city traffic so that the impact is very large.”
According to Kramadibrata, BSD City is also an ideal place to pilot Grab’s new services, like the provision of personal mobility devices (PMD) to facilitate close-range transportation, shared mobility solutions, and also en electric vehicles project that is currently being planned with relevant institutions.
In addition, Grab will hold a Grab Ventures Velocity Programme in BSD City to provide startups with training and mentoring sessions for scaling their business. And in order to support local small and medium food and beverage businesses, Grab and Sinar Mas Land are establishing a satellite kitchen named Kitchen by GrabFood. The project is expected to connect local restaurants with customers around the city by utilising Grab’s fleet and app.
“Through Kitchen By GrabFood, we provide technology systems and business models to help small merchants to expand their business without requiring capital investment in the future. We enable the small business to enter our platform regardless of their location so they can reach a wider market that is Grab’s users,” Kramadibrata said.
The signing ceremony of the collaboration was attended by Sinar Mas Land CEO Michael Widjaja. According to him, BSD City is projected to be the centre of the digital technology industry in Indonesia as the area hosts various reputable IT and business schools, as well as co-working spaces for startups. It will also be a home for many tech and creative industry companies.
Editor: Brady Ng
