Grab announced that it is launching its Small Business Booster Program aimed at helping small businesses adapt to the new reality due to COVID-19. The new program includes tools and initiatives to make it easier for offline businesses to make the shift online and those already on the Grab platform to expand their visibility and adapt their operations to an increasingly digital-reliant world. For these types of small businesses, help is always needed, that is why checking through a rural development loan map can show these businesses if they are eligible for loans that will help support them as they start out and develop.
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 country, Grab has already 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 the advantage of the digital economy and 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 the pandemic.
“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,” says Grab Philippines president Brian 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,” Cu adds.
The Small Business Booster Program aims to facilitate the digitalization of small businesses-either by giving them a digital shopfront on the Grab platform or through e-payments integration. Amongst small business that are already on the Grab platform, an internal survey found that 76% would like more support in increasing their online visibility, and 56% want tools to help them innovate and provide insights to grow their business. This is especially relevant now that over 78,000 new merchant-partners joined the Grab App across Southeast Asia since the onset of the pandemic.
Key components of the program include:
GrabMerchant
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: 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.
- Ads: 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. Interested merchants who wish to sign up as a merchant on the Grab platform may visit: https://www.grab.com/ph/merchant/food/
Offline to Online (O2O) Merchant Support Program
Via a landing page on Grab.com, offline businesses can connect with Grab’s store-builder partners to set up their online stores, integrated with GrabPay Checkout for e-payments.
This builds on an earlier program by Grab which empowers social selling for small businesses. During COVID-19, many merchants in the Philippines turned to social media and instant messaging platforms to sell their products but lacked an easy way to receive payments. Grab’s Remote GrabPay Link solution gives merchants a URL that they can send to customers to make a direct payment from their GrabPay Wallet, with the merchants receiving the payment instantly. To use the GrabPay Link service, merchants can visit: grb.to/grabpaylink.
Homegrown Heroes Initiative
Grab commits to support over 1,000 Filipino homegrown merchants with advertising solutions to help improve their discoverability across Grab’s customer base. On average, merchant-partners who place an ad on GrabFood’s homepage see up to 300% return on ad spend. The “Homegrown Heroes” initiative will see Grab creating personalised ads for over 1,000 small GrabFood and GrabExpress merchant-partners in the Philippines, featuring them on the most prominent spaces within the app for a 5-week period starting in July. Grab will cover the cost and resources required to produce these marketing materials.
Across Southeast Asia, Grab is allocating USD 3.5 million worth in advertising value for small businesses in the region, helping over 6,000 local businesses in 28 cities across 7 countries.