Grab announced that it has opened two new R&D centres in Bangalore, India and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, bringing their total number of R&D centres to six.

The company has been aggressively expanding its global R&D capabilities, doubling the number of R&D centres in the last quarter. Along with the opening of these centres, they will be adding more than 800 new R&D jobs in the next two years across Grab’s six R&D centres in Beijing, Bangalore, Jakarta, Vietnam, Singapore and Seattle. This is to keep up with the growing business across the region.

Grab’s new R&D centre in India will house up to 200 engineers, who will focus on developing new payments technologies for GrabPay, Grab’s digital payments platform. The R&D centre in Vietnam wil

l capitalise on the engineers’ country-specific expertise to create in-app user experiences tailored to users in Vietnam, as well as enhance the experiences for users across the region.On top of that, It was also announced that the Singapore and Seattle centres will move to a larger office spaces. Singapore’s centre will move in to Singapore’s Central Business District. Grab Singapore is Grab’s largest R&D centre and will continue to drive development of the app based on local market research, and introduce new services and features that improve the user experience. Meanwhile, the Seattle office will be expanding to a larger office in Columbia Center, located in Seattle’s central business district, which will provide space for 60 engineers.

Over the last quarter, Grab launched three new transport services – GrabShare, GrabCoach and GrabShuttle, as well as the rollout of GrabRewards, a customer loyalty programme. As Grab’s businesses and products grow, it leverages a model of distributed engineering teams to access specific sets of expertise in each of its R&D centres around the world, such as machine learning, predictive data analytics, mobile-first technology, and consumer-focused user experience.