"Could a Super-App Thrive in the West?" by Javier Vergara

I recently came back from a months-long trip across Southeast Asia. I started in Singapore, travelled through Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, and finally returned to Singapore to fly back West. If you’ve never been to Southeast Asia, I really recommend it. It’s a region bursting with diversity — from landscapes and history to culture and food — and apart from Singapore, it’s incredibly affordable. It’s also very safe: despite being less wealthy than many Western countries (perhaps comparable to parts of Latin America), crime rates are low, and you can walk around without much worry. Go. You won’t regret it.

That said, when I talk about Southeast Asia being super diverse, that’s only partly true today. Yes, people speak different languages, follow different religions, and have distinct cultures, but at the same time, the region feels increasingly interconnected. This may be partly due to regional cooperation through ASEAN, but I’m not trying to give you a sociological analysis here. Instead, I want to reflect on something specific that all these countries seem to have in common: Grab.

From tuk-tuk drivers in Siem Reap to boatmen in Koh Jum, and even office workers on Singapore’s Sentosa Island — everyone uses Grab.

So, what is Grab?

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In Western terms, it’s easiest to say Grab is like Uber, Bolt, or Cabify — a ride-hailing app. But that barely scratches the surface. Grab is not just about transport; it’s a super-app — a digital Swiss army knife for everyday life.

Grab goes beyond food and parcel delivery. It offers:

• Digital wallets and loyalty programmes

• Microloans and financing (even for small businesses)

• Insurance products

• Fraud detection services

• Health and telemedicine

• Mapping and navigation (yes, its own maps)

• Short-term accommodation similar to Airbnb

They haven’t fully launched messaging yet, but GrabChat is coming — not just for driver-passenger coordination, but full communication. In short, Grab is an everything-app.

This concept of a super-app isn’t unique to Grab. China has WeChat. India has Tata Neu. But this model hasn’t yet caught on in the West — and attempts so far haven’t come close.

Uber and Bolt have tried expanding into food delivery and logistics, but their ecosystems are still narrow. Elon Musk keeps talking about turning X into a super-app, but it hasn’t happened yet.

So why has Asia embraced super-apps — and the West hasn't? There seem to be three key reasons:

1) Many Southeast Asian countries experienced rapid economic growth only in the last 20 years or so. Most people couldn’t afford computers in the 1990s, so when they did gain access to the internet in the 2000s or 2010s, it was via smartphones. They skipped the desktop era entirely — unlike the West, which moved from desktop to mobile gradually.

2) A large portion of the population in Asia was previously unbanked. With the rise of mobile phones, apps like Grab filled that financial services gap. In the West, most people were already banked when smartphones became mainstream.

3) Western governments have cracked down on tech monopolies (think Microsoft in the 90s and early 2000s) and now focus heavily on privacy and antitrust issues. In contrast, many Asian governments are more hands-on or authoritarian, and public concerns around data privacy are less pronounced. In collectivist cultures, the idea of personal data ownership is not as central as in the individualistic West.

But then the question is: Could a super-app work in the West?

There’s clearly a market gap, as no such app exists yet. But could it succeed? I’m not so sure. And honestly, I hope it doesn't — for reasons I’d rather explore in another post.

Still, if not Europe or the US, perhaps a super-app could thrive in Latin America. After all, it shares some of the same structural characteristics that made super-apps take off in Asia.

Just some food for thought.