To explore their rapid growth and future trajectory, CNBC-TV18 spoke with Philip Kandal, CPO of Grab; Hamad Al Hajri, CEO of Snoonu; and Juan Pablo Ortega, Co-Founder of Rappi, on the sidelines of Web Summit Qatar 2025.
Edited Excerpt from the Discussion:
Q: A global superapp typically involves a wide range of services. How does one select which services to integrate with the app to meet user needs? How are you all doing it?
Kandal: We started in mobility and then expanded there to food, financial services, banking, etc. We are there to serve our drivers and merchants and ultimately allow them to have a better life by earning more. And that’s where we select how to add more services that help our audience.
For example, when we launched food, we saw that mobility services are most popular in the morning and evening, but drivers are idle in the afternoon. Adding food during off-peak hours can keep our drivers busy throughout the day, so that was a huge win.
Then, financial services gave our drivers loans so that they could afford vehicles, upgrade their cars, or upgrade their stores. So, that’s how these things fit together, keeping our drivers and merchants busy.
Q: How are you selecting which services to offer?
Hajri: Why not have a superapp? Why must business models stick to one service? We have three big factors. The GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) is a small market — just 45 million people. So many startups and ideas will not be validated by GCC. It has to be embedded as part of superapps.
The other thing is that because it’s a small market, the ecosystem is not mature enough, so you need a superapp that provides this service to the customer.
The last factor is consumer behaviour. How do you think the future looks? Imagine you have 20 apps on your phone, and you say, “I need food from here,” “I need groceries from here,” or “I would like to make a booking from here.” So, why not have superapps?
Q: But how are you not making it overwhelming for users? How are you selecting your services?
Ortega: In our case at Rappi, it was slightly different. We started as a delivery app for supermarkets and restaurants or restaurants and convenience stores. We added a section that delivered whatever you wanted. Then, people were able to pull whatever they wanted. We started seeing that people ordered electronics and other things, and following user preference, we started adding more services.
But as you mentioned, it can be overwhelming, and we took it too far. We added live streaming and video games; if you look at that, we rolled back on that. So today you can get anything delivered.
Financial services are another thing that adds value to the users, and they add value to the app. For us, it wasn’t that much giving credit to the couriers, but it was being able to expedite the payment experience. The whole financial service part of Rappi was built on how can we make it better for users to buy inside the app, and that experience led me to build Yuno, which is solving the payment problems around the world.
Q: Snoou has become a notable player in the Gulf region. What regional or cultural preferences would you consider as you scale beyond borders?
Hajri: Food, that’s the first thing. Everyone likes food. However, superapps can tap into a more local experience because they provide multiple services to meet different customer needs. This is a competitive advantage over a global company like Uber. I believe Grab was the answer for Uber in the Singapore market, and Rappi was the answer for Uber Eats in Colombia. Similarly, we have a German and a British company, and focusing on hyper-local needs was the only way to customise our customers’ experience.
But loyalty will play a significant role in the future, especially among young people, and we’ve already done it. We have launched a loyalty programme, which will be a big bid for us, especially in the GCC region.
Watch the accompanying video for the entire discussion.
