Development of GrabMart in the Eyes of a Marketing Manager

There hasn’t been a dull moment for Gioneva Thamrin in the four years she’s been working at Grab. For her, every day is a challenge and an opportunity to grow. Gioneva started her career at Grab as an intern in November 2017 and joined us again as a permanent employee the next year. Gioneva, who was still a fresh graduate at that time, was surprised by the development of Grab in such a short time. Read on to find out more about her experience.

Hi Gioneva, thanks for chatting with us! Tell us more about yourself and your journey with Grab.

Hello! I am the Marketing Manager for GrabMart. I started my career at Grab as an intern for Grab Branding team in Malaysia in November 2017 and became a permanent employee after I finished my degree in 2018. When the pandemic hit in 2021, I wanted to be closer to my family so I decided to move to Grab Indonesia through its internal mobility programme.

I was quite surprised that Grab is growing very rapidly. When I was an intern in Malaysia, Grab was not yet the super-app it is today. It was just a ride-hailing app before. But I returned to Grab to work full-time, I was surprised by all the other services Grab had begun to provide, such as food delivery and GrabPay.

How about GrabMart? Tell us about GrabMart’s progress!

In 2019 I was asked to be involved in the GrabMart pilot project. At that time, GrabMart was still very new and in the same category as GrabFood. We were still evaluating the demand for online shopping. In the first half of 2020, I was split between handling GrabFood and GrabMart But in the second half of 2020, we decided to make GrabMart into an independent vertical with the aim of helping people in the midst of the pandemic to shop without leaving home. The growth of GrabMart has been much faster compared to previous years. The market potential in Indonesia and Malaysia is very large.

You said you moved from Grab Malaysia to Indonesia. What was the process like?

At that time I saw that Grab Indonesia had a vacancy for the same role I was doing in Malaysia. Without hesitation I discussed this matter with my manager as well as the hiring manager. They understood my situation and the process went very smoothly. My transfer process was completed in less than two months.

That’s good! Now tell us about one of your experiences with the marketing campaign you are doing!

When the pandemic was at its peak, we realised that many working moms were stressed because they had to juggle work and their kids. At that time we created the ‘Delivery Doodles’ initiative in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. With this initiative, children can draw the food they want and scan the image into the Grab app. After the image is scanned, a GrabFood menu will appear. This initiative is very interesting because this activity can help to distract the child while their mother is working, and at the same time foster interactive activities between mother and child.

In addition, we also created a ‘Serba Dekat’ campaign at the end of last year where users can find out which merchants are near them and another big campaign I did with GrabFood & GrabMart is the year-end ‘MAKANTHON’ raffle campaign where users can win cars, gold, and also IPhones by ordering as many orders as possible.

Now that you’re almost a Grabversaurus, how do you feel about the experiences you’ve had in these past four years?

I’ve never had a dull moment at Grab. I always find new challenges and I’ve witnessed myself grow in the last four years. I have supportive colleagues and managers, and every half-yearly, we have a development plan, not only for our career growth, but also for personal growth.

Finally, describe Grab in 3 words!

Fun – Impactful – Encouraging

Want to be a marketer at Grab like Gioneva? Look out for job vacancies at Grab.careers!