Southeast Asian ride-sharing platform Grab plans to build new R&D centres in India and Vietnam and hire 800 developers over the next two years at its six research facilities.

The new R&D centres are planned in Bengaluru (Bangalore), India, and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and add to the company’s existing facilities in Beijing, Jakarta, Singapore and Seattle.

Grab also said it is moving its Singapore R&D centre, its largest, to a larger space in the city’s central business district to keep pace with its rapid growth.

In a statement, the company said the expansion supports its “multi-modal transport platform and proprietary payments system across Southeast Asia”. These include the launch over the last quarter of GrabShare, GrabCoach and GrabShuttle as well as the rollout of its customer loyalty programme GrabRewards.

Grab co-founder Tan Hooi Ling said Southeast Asia is developing at a rapid pace and “we have an unprecedented opportunity to deliver a platform that caters to the region’s mobile-first environment and infrastructural needs”. She said addressing such challenges requires a combination of deep local understanding and best-in-class engineering.

The Bengaluru centre will have up to 200 engineers who will develop digital payments technologies for GrabPay, while the Ho Chi Minh City facility will focus on improving the in-app user experience.

Grab operates in 39 cities across six countries with more 710,000 drivers in its network. It claims a 95 per cent market share of third-party taxi-hailing apps and more than 50 per cent market share in private cars in the six markets.

Last month Grab reportedly was close to finalising a deal to acquire Indonesian online payment startup Kudo for more than $100 million.