Three major taxi firms in the northern Vietnamese city Hanoi are uniting their 3,000 vehicles to operating under a single brand, G7, starting in October, reports VNExpress.
A similar cooperation between taxi firms already exists in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s capital in the South of the country.
These are reactions to the growing influence of ride-hailing app Grab, the taxi operators said according to the report. Under the G7 brand, the three taxi firms are developing their own ride-hailing app to compete with Grab and other ride-hailing startups.
A Vietnamese logistics firm put US$100 million into local ride-hailing app Vato. And Indonesia’s ride-hailing app Go-Jek chose Vietnam as its first overseas market. It’s only available in Ho Chi Minh City for now, not in Hanoi.
Meanwhile, Grab in Vietnam still has to grapple with an unclear legal status of its operations, according to VNExpress. There’s an ongoing debate about whether GrabCar vehicles, which are private cars, will be required to carry special stickers to differentiate them from regular cars. A decision on this is due in October, after the next session of the National Assembly.
Takeaways:
— Since it became evident that Grab is taking over Uber’s Southeast Asia operations a few months ago, there’ve been a lot of movements in Vietnam’s app-enabled transportation sector. More companies believed they had a chance to compete now that Uber is out of the picture.
— Ride-hailing is disrupting the transportaiton sector across Southeast Asia, forcing old players to come up with unusual solutions, such as forming alliances.
— Regulators are also still trying to work out the ground rules for disruptive business models like ride-hailing. Being too lax might have serious impact on economic stability. Being too strict might stifle innovation and opportunities.
Editor: Ben Jiang