Coca-Cola, Grab tie up to accelerate merchants’ digitalisation

The partnership covers six Southeast Asian markets.

Coca-Cola and Grab entered a partnership that aims to accelerate digital skilling for merchants in six Southeast Asian countries including Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam.

In a joint statement, the companies said there are four strategic pillars to the partnership.

First, Coca-Cola will assist retailers within its distribution network to onboard GrabFood and GrabMart to expand their digital customer base. Grab, meanwhile, will be supporting interested merchants on its platform to be Coca-Cola distributors. They will also offer digital literacy and e-commerce training to the merchants.

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The companies will also engage consumers through GrabAds. Advertisements would be present offline on the Grab fleet, online through the Grab app, and through gamification and product sampling which will allow Coca-Cola to build more purchasing occasions with consumers.

Coca-Cola will also tap Grab’s platform solutions such as GrabExpress to address supply chain inefficiencies, and GrabPay for in-store cashless payment to support the digitalisation of small and traditional merchants. They said the digitalisation of in-store payments will provide the beverage company with near real-time insight to forecast sale trends, and restock shelves immediately through GrabExpress, amongst others.

The beverage company will also rely on Grab’s merchant-partner network and scale for the trials of zero-sugar beverages, allowing consumers in the region to choose easily the beverages they need.