{"id":209651,"date":"2024-03-22T15:24:06","date_gmt":"2024-03-22T07:24:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.grab.com\/sg\/?post_type=editorial&p=209651"},"modified":"2025-02-26T18:39:36","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T10:39:36","slug":"grabs-patents-innovation-tech-ai","status":"publish","type":"editorial","link":"https:\/\/www.grab.com\/sg\/inside-grab\/stories\/grabs-patents-innovation-tech-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"Grab\u2019s patent-friendly environment is a catalyst for innovation"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Many components of the Grab app are powered by unique technology developed in-house. These innovations contribute to our growing patent portfolio. Today, Grab holds the largest patent portfolio in Southeast Asia among its peers.<\/p>

Southeast Asia underwent substantial economic growth, digitalisation, and technological development in recent years. However, no Southeast Asian nation featured in the top-10<\/a> of patent-filing countries in 2022, despite their sizable populations. Meanwhile, small countries like Switzerland and the Netherlands made the list. India ranks 7th. China alone contributed almost half of all global patent applications that year.<\/p>

Patents can incentivise innovation and help businesses grow and expand. We\u2019ve seen this play out first-hand at Grab.\u00a0<\/p>

Our patents cover important front- and back-end features tailor-made to improve the user experience of our on-demand app. These features boost driver productivity and help micro, small and medium sized enterprises grow their businesses online<\/a>.<\/p>

(Read more: The key to Grab driver-partners earning more: Productivity<\/a><\/strong>)<\/p>

We established the Grab Patent Office (GPO) in 2019 to steer and coordinate our patent strategies. We cultivate a patent-friendly environment to drive innovation within the organisation\u2014and hope to inspire other technology enterprises to do so as well.\u00a0<\/p>

Patents developed at Grab\u00a0<\/h5>

Beyond playing an important role in the innovation landscape, patents play a crucial role in motivating teams. Grab rewards contributions to our patent portfolio, including financially. We have a leaderboard that highlights inventors who have accumulated the highest number of patents. These measures recognise our inventors for the dedication of time and resources put into research and development.\u00a0<\/p>

Lead data scientist Sun Chang, for instance, filed a patent for the allocation probability model for \u201cjust-in-time allocation<\/a>\u201d in 2023.<\/p>

Getting our delivery-partners to arrive at restaurants at the right time requires our machine learning and predictive analytics engines to figure out when we should assign a delivery-partner to head towards the restaurant. Our engineers refer to this sweet spot as the \u201cjust-in-time\u201d window.<\/p>

The Grab system calculates this based on multiple factors such as the time taken for food preparation, an estimate of how long it would take to assign an order to a delivery-partner as well as the time taken for delivery-partners to get to the restaurant and pick up the order.\u00a0<\/p>

Figuring out this process for Southeast Asian kitchens and making it scalable is far from trivial, and it has helped Grab, its merchant and driver-partners fulfil orders more efficiently.<\/p>

For technology or process to be patentable, it must contain something novel, non-obvious, and must be industrially applicable. To identify potentially patentable innovations the GPO holds ideation sessions with Grab\u2019s tech teams. We also keep an eye out for patentable inventions from events like the company\u2019s hackathon (known as Grabathon)<\/a>.<\/p>

Most recently, Last Mile Navigation<\/a>\u2014developed by a team at the tenth edition of Grabathon\u2014was put on its patent application journey.\u00a0<\/p>

In Southeast Asian cities, delivery-partners often face the challenge of locating the exact drop-off points, because clear address information is not always available. Delivery-partners therefore have to rely on additional information from consumers via GrabChat or notes.<\/p>

By mining data from consumer notes and chats using a natural language processing model, we\u2019re now able to provide more precise delivery instructions to drivers when they\u2019re about to reach the drop-off point.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The expanded pin (in red) displays additional information to guide delivery-partners to their destinations.<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Delivery-partners will see an expanded pin within the in-app navigation tool, which displays additional information that will help them locate their drop-off point. This is accompanied by images from our crowdsourced map data.<\/p>

Our patent portfolio also covers inventions under Grab\u2019s enterprise businesses such as\u00a0GrabMaps<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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In its latest iteration, the KartaCam comes in a much sleeker design, which makes it easier to carry.<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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We\u2019ve filed patents for the edge AI and IoT technology used in KartaCams to sieve through the thousands of footage collected. This ensures only high-quality and relevant images are used for map-making. For example, AI techniques are employed to perform image similarity comparison to reduce duplicate or similar images being uploaded.<\/p>

These patented technologies showcase our commitment to using the latest advancements to tackle real life problems. As we adapt to the ever-changing tech industry, these innovative ideas will enable us to improve our service offerings for users across the region.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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