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Grab is messing up the world’s largest mapping community’s data in Southeast Asia [techcrunch.com]

More on Grab-OMS — Grab said it has added attribution inside its app. The note appears at the bottom of the home page as you scroll down, however OSM's license terms state that "credit should appear in the corner of the map" when data is used for "a browsable electronic map" pic.twitter.com/iwGyXsHN0s [t.co]

— Jon Russell (@jonrussell) December 20, 2018 [twitter.com]

It may sound trivial to some, but mapping information is a crucial differentiator that is much sought-after by the world’s billion-dollar ride-hailing companies.

Indeed, Grab’s failure to comply with OSM’s policy comes barely a week after it was reported that Go-Jek [mothership.sg] — its Indonesia-based rival that’s backed by Tencent, Google and others — had copied Grab’s map data, specifically its points of interest in Singapore as part of its recent expansion into the country.

Bulusu refused to be drawn into commenting on the reports, claiming that he “doesn’t know” if Go-Jek did scrape Grab’s data.

A Go-Jek spokesperson did not reply to a request for comment.

Grab has indicated its intention to work more closely with the OSM community in Thailand. A recent report from Quartz [qz.com] shone a light on the work it is doing in Southeast Asia, particularly in Indonesia, where it collaborates with HOT, Humanitarian OSM Team, a nonprofit that spun out of the OSM movement, which specializes in mapping for disaster relief.

Bulusu said he plans to meet with Thailand’s OSM community while he admitted that the company must do better.

“We apologize to the Thai OSM community,” he said. “We’re planning to build a process [and are] trying to have an open discussion with the Thailand forum.”

As part of that bridge-building effort, Bulusu himself has committed to meeting with OSM members face-to-face in Thailand. A meeting at Grab’s office in Bangkok is in the planning, although the Grab exec has not yet committed to a request to meet in Chiang Mai, where a substantial number of community members are located.

“We totally understand the Thailand sentiment and we’ve stopped mapping to make sure we do the right thing,” Bulusu added. “Across the region, we’ve done a lot of good work on OSM and we want to continue that… if people reach out, we want to work with them.”

It’s certainly ironic that Grab, which CEO Anthony Tan continually positioned as the “local champion” [techcrunch.com] during its battle with Uber and has raised more money than any startup in Southeast Asia, has resorted to outsourcing elements of its mapping to India and, in doing so, harmed the local champions developing maps that are designed to help improve services for all.

Bulusu, however, defended Grab’s use of GlobalLogic. He said that Hyderabad, where the GlobalLogic team working with Grab is based, “is where most global mapping talent is based.” He said usage of the agency was “complementary to local teams” and, while he acknowledged that there could be errors, he again reiterated that Grab is keen to establish a system of working with Thailand’s OSM community.

Update 12/21 04:45 PST: Grab has provided an additional response to this story as follows:

The article misrepresents the positive relationship we have with the OSM community across Southeast Asia. Together, in collaboration with OSM, we have conducted numerous meetups, mapathons and other outreach across the region like our GEO*Star program to nurture interest in mapping among the larger community. By working hand in hand with OSM, we have reviewed almost 1 million KM of roads across SEA this year alone. We take exception to the misleading headline, and are disappointed that the article focuses only on some mistakes made in Thailand, without highlighting the full efforts of Grab’s on-ground education and training to improve maps in Southeast Asia. We hope this does not detract from scale of the impact the whole mapping community can make, nor deter enthusiasts and corporate partners from participating in the effort.

Specific to the concerns of Thai OSM, we acknowledge that mistakes have been made in Thailand and would like to assure the community that they do not have to be unduly alarmed, as the number of wrong edits made are small and were rectified immediately as soon as we were alerted to them. Out of 150,000 map edits we contributed to OSM in Thailand, 52 (0.03%) were flagged as mistakes by the local community. We believe the best results and quick improvements for mapping are best done through collaboration and community effort, and we will continue to contribute where we can, and most importantly, engage with local mappers to make sure we do it right.

In addition from a TechCrunch perspective, during research for this story, TechCrunch held numerous phone interviews and conversations with Grab and exchanged multiple emails prior to the publishing of this story, which is focused on Grab’s mapping efforts in Thailand.

Original Submission