Technology car market race, who is the winner?

According to the Annual Summary Report on the Taxi Market in Vietnam recently released by the market research company Mordor Intelligence, in the fourth quarter of 2024, billionaire Pham Nhat Vuong's Xanh SM officially rose to become the number 1 in Vietnam with 37.41% market share, surpassing Grab (36.62%) and leaving behind other competitors such as Be (5.55%), Mai Linh (4.81%), Vinasun (2.44%).

Green SM welcomes guests. Source: Green SM

Mordor Intelligence said that Xanh SM scored perfect scores in categories such as service quality, geographical coverage, and customer satisfaction. In addition, the report also pointed out that the average growth rate of this industry is expected to grow very rapidly at 22.7% from 2025-2030, while previously, in the period of 2020-2024, this rate was only 4.72% due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Previously, a study conducted at the end of 2024 by Q&Me - a leading company in the field of market research in Vietnam, also showed that customer satisfaction with the SM Green electric car service reached 83%, surpassing Grab (80%) and Be (68%).

The percentage of customers willing to recommend Xanh SM services is up to 84% for electric taxis and 77% for electric motorbikes. In addition, Xanh SM is also the application with the most spending by users.

The percentage of customers willing to recommend Xanh SM services is up to 84% for electric taxis and 77% for electric motorbikes. At the same time, Xanh SM is also the application with the most user spending.

In addition, Decision Lab, YouGov's exclusive partner in Vietnam, published the report "The Connected Consumer Q1/2024" also indicating that Xanh SM accounted for 32% of the market penetration rate in Q1/2024, ranking second and far ahead of other applications. Thus, Xanh SM's market share and ranking continuously increased, catching up with and surpassing its biggest competitor.

Xanh SM's growth is considered miraculous when this company was founded by billionaire Pham Nhat Vuong in March 2023. Just 15 days later, Xanh SM signed an investment and cooperation agreement with Be Group, aiming to bring VinFast electric cars and electric motorbikes into technology transportation services, helping to integrate GSM's electric vehicle service into the Be platform.

In just a short time, Xanh SM has surprised the market with the speed of developing ride-hailing applications and the number of taxis in all provinces and cities across the country.

Modor Intelligence's revenue report data shows that Xanh SM rose to 2nd place in the fourth quarter of 2023, accounting for more than 18% of the entire technology car industry's market share, behind Grab and double the market share of Be Group (9.21%), 3 times the market share of Gojek (5.87%).

According to this report, after only 8 months of operation, Xanh SM has 40,000 employees with 17,000 VinFast electric cars and 15,000 electric motorbikes. The number of competitors in the same industry such as Gojeck, Grab is 200,000 drivers... after appearing on the market for nearly 10 years.

Up to now, Xanh SM has been present in more than 35 provinces and cities across the country and has begun to expand its scale to Southeast Asian countries with the first destination being Laos, followed by Indonesia...

The above results come from the good brand positioning of Xanh SM by using environmentally friendly electric cars and motorbikes and competitive fares, without high price increases during rush hours or bad weather.

According to the business community, Xanh SM is successful thanks to the company's large number of vehicles, from cars to electric motorbikes. Drivers participating in Xanh SM do not have to invest in a vehicle but are "lent" a vehicle by the company to drive. Not to mention, drivers also receive a salary of about 7 million VND/month and receive a discount from the company for each trip.

Be Driver. Source: Be Group

Besides Xanh SM, Be - a pure Vietnamese ride-hailing app - also has impressive growth when it successively defeated foreign giants. Be was officially launched in 2019 under Be Group Joint Stock Company.

Initially, Be was just a motorbike and taxi booking app similar to Grab, Gojek and had a not-so-good position. However, the company has survived 2 years of COVID-19, plus capital from Vietnam Prosperity Bank ( VPBank ), Be Group quickly became a formidable name in the ride-hailing market.

In addition, Be Group mobilized many sources of capital to sponsor the race in the technology car market and develop its service ecosystem.

In 2022, Be Group received a loan worth up to 100 million USD in cooperation with Deutsche Bank. In 2024, VPBank Securities invested in Be Holdings - the owner of Be Group with a total transaction value of up to 729.5 billion VND. After 5 years of development, Be now has more than 300,000 drivers.

In 2023 alone, Be will operate 120 million trips serving Vietnamese users and expand operations to 40 provinces and cities, and Be Group said that in 2023 it will hold 35% of the ride-hailing market share in Vietnam.

After 7 years of operation, Be Group has expanded into many fields such as: Be Ride (booking a car), Be Delivery (delivery), Be Food (ordering food), Be Ads (advertising), booking Xanh SM cars on Be app, booking airline tickets, car tickets, renting cars, recharging phones...

According to Be's announcement, beFood has achieved an order growth rate of up to 390%, the number of customers using the service has increased by 250% compared to 2 years ago.

The number of stores and eateries cooperating with beFood has also increased 7 times since 2022, increasing the frequency of monthly customer orders to 160%. By the end of April 2024, there will be about 75,000 restaurants and eateries on beFood.

According to iPOS's 2023 Food Business Market Report in Vietnam, beFood ranks only behind the two "giants" ShopeeFood and GrabFood with more than 10.84% ​​of businesses registered to use it.

Green SM Driver Source: Green SM

For Be, its success is due to the fact that it does not impose fees for rain or hot weather to push up fares abnormally, so it is trusted by passengers.

In addition, Be and Xanh SM also cooperate in sharing apps for customers to use, as well as supporting Be drivers to switch to electric vehicles at reasonable prices and supporting installment payments through banks.

Faced with the strong growth of Vietnamese ride-hailing companies, Gojek - once a strong competitor of Grab - was knocked down to 4th place by purely Vietnamese ride-hailing and delivery apps Be and Xanh SM and announced its withdrawal from Vietnam from September 16, 2024, with a market share of only 7% according to the report on "Popularity of motorbike-hailing apps in 2024" conducted by Q&Me.

Grab is still the most used ride-hailing and food-ordering company in Vietnam, but its market share is being fiercely competed by two domestic companies, Xanh SM and Be.

Master Tran Anh Tung, Head of Business Administration at the University of Economics and Finance, Ho Chi Minh City, said that purely Vietnamese technology car companies have a competitive advantage, understanding the market and the needs of Vietnamese people better than foreign companies. Vietnamese applications are also flexible in adapting to rapid changes in the market. Not to mention, the operating costs of these units are lower than foreign companies. In particular, domestic car companies have built trust and connection with Vietnamese users.

Analyzing more deeply the strategies of domestic technology car companies, Master Tran Anh Tung said that Be va Xanh SM only focuses on developing the domestic market, especially in big cities, not being dispersed to many countries like foreign corporations. Content businesses continuously improve service quality, apply technology to enhance user experience. Diversify transportation services (from personal cars to delivery, freight transport...), build an ecosystem linked with other industries to increase value for customers.

According to market expert Pham Chinh, the success of domestic technology car companies is still fundamentally a very competitive base price for the service. "Consumers are not loyal in choosing this type of service, they will switch to any place with a low price. The base price is the average transportation cost/km" - this expert said.

Next, purely Vietnamese companies with large investment resources, the ability to rapidly increase the number of vehicles and service coverage networks are extremely important factors helping them increase market share. "Xanh SM, Be have done this very well in the past 2 years. In particular, Xanh SM has extremely impressive coverage, which determines the quality of service. Because, in this industry, waiting time is an equally important factor as price" - Mr. Pham Chinh commented.

In addition, purely Vietnamese car companies also have a very strong investment capacity when continuously launching short-term promotional programs to attract customers. The proof is that in the past year, when Gojek cut down on promotions, they lost a lot of customers and no longer received the attention of consumers as before. This can be considered the stage of "burning money" the most to compete, gain market share and knock the giants Beamin and Gojek out of the market.

In addition, purely Vietnamese companies have very strong, creative and impressive marketing campaigns to increase brand awareness and stimulate national pride. In particular, the ability to apply technology of purely Vietnamese companies is also very fast, not inferior to foreign giants. Whatever foreign applications have, Vietnamese apps have it all, even surpassing them.

According to a market expert, the Vietnamese ride-hailing company is gradually demonstrating its strength and is no longer inferior to its foreign rival Grab by building a high-quality service, competitive prices and equally good features.

However, to develop sustainably, this expert recommends that Vietnamese ride-hailing companies continuously improve their services to increase loyal customers, only then can they maintain their market share.

Otherwise, when other competitors, foreign "giants" with high investment capital and the ability to withstand losses for a long time, join, it will create strong pressure and threaten domestic ride-hailing brands.

Recently, Bolt, a large technology-based ride-hailing app from Europe, is preparing to enter the Vietnamese market by posting a series of recruitment posts for employees and drivers in Ho Chi Minh City.

Specifically, on LinkedIn, this ride-hailing app is recruiting for three positions: operations specialist, team leader, and customer service specialist working at the Ho Chi Minh City office.

Bolt has also run a series of ads on social media recruiting drivers. Currently, the company’s app and website support the Vietnamese language. Vietnamese users can download Bolt on the App Store and Google Play, but cannot log in to use the service.

Bolt was founded in 2013 in Estonia - one of Europe's largest tech hubs by Markus Villig when he was just 19 years old.

After more than 10 years of operation, Bolt has become one of the fastest growing technology companies in Europe. Currently, the company provides services such as ride-hailing, food delivery, grocery delivery, electric vehicle rental and business mobility services, operating in more than 50 countries worldwide.

Source: https://nld.com.vn/cuoc-dua-thi-truong-xe-cong-nghe-ai-la-nguoi-chien-thang-1962501281354263.htm