Solving problems one ride at a time
When asked how Grab Philippines Country Head Brian Cu felt whenever customers say that they miss Uber, he replied, “It makes me want to go back to the office and do more. It means we haven’t done enough to win the customer over.”
Mr. Cu isn’t new to the challenges of heading successful start- ups, coming from previous leadership roles at a renowned clothing brand and a fintech lending company. He said, in an interview with
BusinessWorld, that they knew what they were getting into when they started Grab. That prior preparation did not, however, make it any easier for the people running the popular ride-hailing platform.
Grab Philippines, which recently acquired its competitor Uber to become the largest transport service in the country, has been beset by challenges since the company entered the Philippines in 2013. Due to problems lining up at the door one after the other, whether they are restrictive regulations from the government, social media backlash, or a shortage of partner- drivers, there has never been an easy day at the Grab offices.
“I don’t remember a day that’s not like that,” Mr. Cu said, half-jokingly. “Every day there’s a new challenge.”
“There’s no day where I get to sit and just look at the office and say ‘Okay, let’s talk about the next two months about what to do with Grab’. No, it’s always ‘So what are we going to do tomorrow? We have these problems today and this is how we should solve them.’”
Such challenges were neither very eye- opening nor educational, Mr. Cu said. He knew all of that going in. But what did surprise him about his role as one of the transportation industry’s key leaders is that it required a great deal of finesse and versatility.
“What’s very interesting in the role is that it requires a very versatile individual to be there and I’m trying to learn that versatility,” he said.
One minute he’s talking with Grab’s partner- drivers, and the next he’s relating their experiences to an analyst. When the analyst comes back with the data suggesting changes to better support those drivers, the task once again falls to him to translate it for regulatory and mass consumption.
“The next thing you know you’re being called into Congress, called into the Senate,” he said, a bit incredulously.
And indeed, Mr. Cu proved to be very versatile in person, displaying the same ease and eloquence speaking in a conference of over a hundred business leaders and experts as being interviewed face to face. He even admitted to enjoying drinking sessions with Grab drivers as it provided him an opportunity to learn from them. That is, as long as they did not drive afterwards.
“It’s great to talk to Grab drivers, because you get to know what they went through during the day, and then you can take that into your business meetings the next day,” he said.
In return, he added, the drivers also get to know what happens behind the scenes, how Grab thinks about them and their welfare, and how Grab is trying to involve them in coming up with a solution to their problems.
“That’s something I’m trying to inculcate to all the employees that we have in Grab. The action doesn’t happen in your computer or in the office. It happens out there. When someone’s picking up a passenger, and bringing them home. I encourage that everyone talks to them because it helps them do their jobs better,” Mr. Cu said.
He recalled a particular driver who told him how thankful he was for Grab. He had been an overseas Filipino worker since his child was three years old. When he finally had the chance to come back home, his child was already 11 years old. Grab, he said, allowed him to stay and earn a living in the country without having to miss the experience of watching his child grow up.
Another driver Mr. Cu had talked to was a senior citizen, 65 to 70 years old and retired, but is still driving for Grab for around 14 to 15 hours a day and earning P4,000 to 5,000 a day, not because he needs to but because he enjoys driving. Mr. Cu shared the story on Facebook and received almost immediate backlash.
“The point wasn’t this guy is old and he can drive for a lot of hours and therefore you should too. The point there was to show that people are happy driving, they can make a decent living, and it’s their choice to work or not,” he said.
Mr. Cu believes that despite difficulties, Grab still exists to solve the country’s transportation problems in the same way that it has helped its more or less 50,000 partner-drivers and many hundred thousand riders day to day. That same belief is what keeps him, and his company, moving forward.
When talking about his experiences, rewarding or otherwise, as the country head for Grab Philippines, he said, “The whole versatility you need for the different stakeholders you deal with, the problems you try to solve, it’s a whole myriad of things. It makes the whole thing fun.”