Warned of the stiff competition, more investors nevertheless joined the e-hailing market after the departure of Uber last year.
Last March, Ngoc Son, a driver for UberMoto in Hanoi, noticed on his mobile phone the words ‘chao mung Uber gia nhap dai gia dinh Grab’ (welcome to Grab family).
That was how Son, like many other drivers, received information about Grab. He joined GoViet’s driver staff from October of the same year.
In April, Uber left Vietnam after launching ‘e-hailing culture’ in the country, leaving Grab as the only player in the Vietnam’s $500 million e-hailing market. At that time, experts were concerned about a possible monopoly by Grab. However, new rivals turned up just one month later. Grab now has more rivals than ever before.
Vato, Aber, Mai Linh Bike and others presented themselves before the public, revealing plans to pour hundreds of million of dollars and use thousands of drivers from e-hailing apps.
FastGo and Go-Viet follow two major strategies – offering ‘next-to-nothing fee’ and using the motto ‘Vietnamese use Vietnamese apps’.
Go-Jek, the owner of Go-Viet, has stated that Go-Viet has 35 percent of the motorbike hailing market share in HCM City, and the app has got 1.5 million downloads after six weeks of launching.
However, many of them had to leave the market just after a short time of operation.
With 175,000 car and motorbike drivers, Grab remains the biggest name. However, the firm is now competing with rivals such as Go Viet, Be and Fastgo.
Go Viet said that it has 30 percent of market share in Hanoi and 35 percent in HCM City. To obtain this achievement, since its debut, Go-Viet has been running sale promotion campaigns with surprisingly low service fees, just VND1,000 for one trip.
Meanwhile, Be, which debuted one month ago, has also launched marketing campaigns. And Grab and Fastgo have been trying to lure customers with super-chip services.
Ngoc Son, the former UberMoto driver, now is a driver for Grab and Go Viet.
Traditional taxi firms, which complained about the unhealthy competition, have finally realized that the new trend is unavoidable. Instead of lodging complaints to management agencies, traditional taxi firms have begun developing e-hailing apps of their own.
In August 2018, three taxi firms Thanh Cong, Sao Ha Noi and Ba Sao joined forces to set up the G7 Taxi Alliance.