Expert in deciphering the GSM deal of billionaire Pham Nhat Vuong investing in Be Group, pointed out the key to deciding 90% of the probability of success.

A recent event of great interest is billionaire Pham Nhat Vuong’s establishment of GSM Green and Smart Mobility Joint Stock Company (Green – Smart – Mobility) and cooperation with Be Group to bring electric cars and motorbikes to life. electricity to operate transport services for the first time in Vietnam.

Dr. Ngo Cong Truong – Top 40 best experts of American Quality Association, Director of ASQ Automobile Association in Vietnam – and Master Nguyen The Trung, General Director of John&Partners Education and Consulting JSC gave us some views on this deal.

Is there a precedent for car manufacturers to open taxi businesses and then combine them with ride-hailing apps? What is special about this model?

Dr. Ngo Cong Truong: It used to happen that a car manufacturing business then provided taxi services (broadly speaking, transportation services). That is the case of Checker Motors Corporation (Checker Motors Corporation) in the US. This group used to own the Yellow Cab company, the taxi company with the yellow cabs, the symbol of New York City. However, that was about 100 years ago and the company is no longer active in this field.

Currently, it is rare for a car company to own a taxi and transportation company, but it is possible for car manufacturers to cooperate or be a shareholder of companies providing transfer services. For example, Toyota participates in investing in Grab and Uber. General Motors (GM) also invested in Lyft.

It should be noted here, in my opinion that a car manufacturing business engaged in owning and operating a taxi company can in fact encounter some problems. The most important of which is the ability to operate a service company. Manufacturing enterprises have their own capabilities and corporate culture that are not suitable for a service company. Therefore, not only in the car sector, in other fields, in the process of consulting businesses, we also recommend businesses to be careful when carrying out M&A activities along the value chain when there is no M&A. management capacity.

What about the case of GSM and Be Group?

In the case of GSM, according to current information, the first phase of the cooperation is that GSM invests in Be Group to cooperate in providing electric vehicles for Be Group’s drivers. GSM also recruits drivers and provides transportation services via Be’s App. Therefore, it can be said that GSM is a “finished product warehouse” and makes money by renting cars or doing business with drivers. Sales and customer service (connecting users and drivers) are outsourced (outsourced) via Be.

This method is not new but will also be a good solution for VinFast at this time. With this method, VinFast is almost not a transport service operator, but only participates in Be Group’s app to connect GSM drivers .

In your opinion, how will VinFast benefit from this model?

MSc Nguyen The Trung: With VinFast, first, VinFast can quickly sell a number of cars and solve the problem of inventory (transfer of inventory via GSM). In the context of this year, consumption is slowing down and selling cars directly to the end consumer (B2C) will be quite challenging for VinFast.

For vehicles at GSM that are leased to participate in taxi operations, this will also help VinFast utilize inventory to generate cash flow.

When cooperating with Be Group, VinFast will sell/rent cars to drivers. In essence, this is shifting the sales channel through B2B sales. In particular, the car buyer is the person doing the transportation service business and they have a source of revenue to pay for the car loan.

Another benefit for VinFast, is that by putting a large number of vehicles into continuous operation (commercial vehicles will move a lot more than family cars), they will have a large amount of data to use. such as: data on common errors and failures for improvement, battery data, data for developing the autonomous driving system that VinFast is building…

With a large number of cars sold, the popularization of the VinFast brand in Vietnam will also be an advantage for VinFast to continue to raise capital . The increase in the number of cars sold means that the revenue stream from after-sales services such as warranty, maintenance, and sale of spare parts will also increase. This will also be the basis for VinFast to include revenue stream projections for investment calling activities.

What about Be Group and other stakeholders?

MSc Nguyen The Trung: For Be Group , this cooperation also provides an opportunity to increase the number of drivers in their application, expand market share, increase the number of app users, significantly increase including the ability to compete with current competitors such as Grab. In addition, being invested by VinFast will also increase Be Group’s opportunity to continue to raise more capital in the following funding rounds.

Regarding the revenue stream, we do not know the details of the agreement, but we believe that the partnership will also significantly increase the revenue stream for Be Group.

On the other hand, drivers will also benefit from this deal. Participating in the business of buying electric cars will be a new option for them to save on petrol costs. In addition, drivers participating in this program are also supported by banks, specifically VPBank, in lending to buy cars. Joining as a driver of GSM can also have a good income with hard salary and social insurance. This is also an additional option for drivers who want to participate but do not want to invest in a car.

As for VPBank , a party that has not been mentioned much, we realize that this bank plays a significant role. It is known that VPBank is the leading bank in terms of car loan market share. Continuing to participate in GSM car loans will help VPBank maintain its leading position and expand its customer base. Car loan customers are a group of customers who will have more financial service needs that VPBank can continue to exploit.

As such, among these stakeholders, The role of banks is very important because without banks, this business idea would not be feasible. We do not yet know the objectives of this project, but from our perspective, this project will be successful in transferring a portion of credit from VinFast to car buyers through the sale of finished goods. bank loans.

In fact, a lot of car companies have finance companies to lend to car buyers (Toyota, Hyundai….). VinFast currently does not have a financial company, so cooperation with banks is a must.

With that model, what will be the challenge for the parties?

We think there could be two challenges for this project. Firstly, from the bank’s side, as mentioned above, it is a challenge whether lending policies, interest rates, support… are suitable to encourage a large number of drivers to buy cars.

The second is the operational factor, the large-scale operation management is always a problem that businesses need to solve. In the immediate future, Be will operate through Be’s App and according to Be’s service standards. However, in the future, whether Be’s personnel can meet the needs of maintaining (or improving) service standards on a larger scale is still a difficult problem to solve.

In your opinion, what will be the key factor determining the feasibility of this model in Vietnam?

Dr. Ngo Cong Truong: We appreciate this idea and business model. This model is not too new and there are reasons for it to be viable. However, we need to clearly distinguish the superstructure which is the business model and strategy; and the infrastructure part: is the system, process, operation.

It is a fact that we often mention that in Vietnam, the upper part (Hoshin: orientation / direction) is usually done very well because the Vietnamese are very smart and learn quickly. The infrastructure to go into implementation (Kanri: Execution/deployment/management) is not well done.

Therefore, in the classic execution and strategic management model Hoshin Kanri of Operational Excellence (operating excellence), it is extremely important to focus on execution and adjustment to the PDCA improvement cycle. Only in this way can the phenomenon of “elephant head and mouse tail” be avoided.

Therefore, in our opinion, the feasibility of this project depends 90% on implementation and operation rather than on model. Because this model is quite standard and there are proofs of work (called model).

So to increase the feasibility of this project, what advice do you have for businesses?

Dr. Ngo Cong Truong: First, the ability to operate, optimize and continuously improve is a capability that enterprises need to build. And to have this ability, businesses need to approach methodically according to the standards that the world has, to avoid groping and “reinventing the wheel”.

Currently, Operational Excellence (OE – optimizing enterprise operating structure) and Lean Six Sigma have been standardized into optimal toolkits. Businesses can follow world standards to build a team with Lean Six Sigma certifications (Green belt, Black belt). They will be “improvement/innovation leaders” called Change Agents in the business. With this team, the waste, loss, defective goods, service quality… can be continuously improved according to a scientific method.

At John&Partners, we have introduced OE and Lean Six Sigma according to the standards of the American Quality Association, ASQ to Vietnamese businesses for more than 10 years.

On the side of business leaders, leaders should learn and interact with the world’s leading experts and CEOs of large corporations. Nowadays, this is not difficult at all. Large seminars such as ASQ, SHRM, SIBOS… are great opportunities to meet and learn at a very low cost. For example, if leaders need to know about ChatGPT or IBM’s perspective on ChatGPT, attend these seminars and ask directly the founder of ChatGPT or the CEO of IBM. The other models are similar.

This year, the annual ASQ conference will be held in May in Philadelphia, USA (also the headquarters of IBM). As far as we know, there are only 2 Vietnamese registered. Representatives of businesses who want to enter the car accessories industry can join ASQ and join the ASQ Auto Association. In it, standards and practical application of standards such as IATF16949 are shared openly and business cooperation is always discussed. If you participate in these events, the time to find out and find partners will be greatly reduced.

In short, we encourage business leaders to take the opportunity to learn from the best. That way, the road to success will certainly be much shorter.

Thank you two!