What is the fierce battle of technology-calling market, waiting for the second generation of leaders of Grab, be and Go-Jek?

Do not know intentionally or unintentionally, from 2019 to 2020, the “founding fathers” of three companies calling technology vehicles are dominating the market , Grab, Be Group and Go-Jek , respectively, leaving and giving way. for the second generation of leaders. Each pioneer leaves with a different attitude, but all successors have only one position: how to do well or at least equal to the old ones, develop the inherited inheritance, not Must destroy it.

Many people believe that, with what the predecessors Jerry Lim and Nguyen Tuan Anh leave, the task of the new Grab Vietnam CEO Nguyen Thai Hai Van will be easier than the two colleagues at Go-Jek Phung Tuan Duc. and be – Nguyen Hoang Phuong; but past experience shows that it is not so. Building a map is very difficult but it is harder to preserve and develop it even harder!

Ms. Nguyen Thai Hai Van with the mission of maintaining Grab’s market dominance through expanding coverage in Vietnam

At the beginning of 2020, there have been many significant changes on Grab Vietnam’s leadership. “The perfect couple” Jerry Lim and Nguyen Tuan Anh all left Grab, instead, Ms. Nguyen Thai Hai Van – former Vice President of Marketing Unilever Vietnam, replaced Mr. Lim as CEO and steered the Grab boat in Vietnam. Male.

Mr. Nguyen Tuan Anh is the “founding father” of Grab, when he was co-founder of Grab Vietnam and cum CEO in the early days, having been in charge of such areas as 2-wheel vehicles, 4-wheel vehicles or food ordering. In 2016, when the parent company sent Mr. Jerry Lim to run Grab officially, Mr. Nguyen Tuan Anh gradually moved to become Director of online payment for Grab.

Commenting on his predestined relationship with Grab, Mr. Nguyen Tuan Anh said that the reason for Grab’s achievements today in Vietnam market is because they met the right people at the right time. After leaving Grab in early 2020, Mr. Tuan Anh moved to become CEO of VinID.

Similarly, after completing the mission to bring Grab to dominate the Vietnamese ride and food market, Mr. Jerry Lim returned to Singapore with his family after more than 3 years of exile. From February 2020, Mr. Lim will be in charge of Grab’s Customer Service Experience in Southeast Asia.

It can be said that the departure of Mr. Nguyen Tuan Anh and Jerry Lim is in Grab’s plan, because both have successfully completed their tasks. “For the past three years, Grab has set a goal of finding a leader who understands Vietnamese life, understands people’s aspirations and needs. This change is part of a long-term business plan. of the company “ , Ms. Nguyen Thai Hai Van once told us that.

Therefore, these two fares were well received by Grab and gave off warmly.

” Grab is now widely used in 1 – 2 areas, next we want to open the service even wider, into an ecosystem towards sustainability and more functionality for users to use. If you Imagine, we wish to be able to build Grab as a companion for the people from morning to evening, making your daily life a lot easier and faster.

The second goal, we only serve the main cities. There are many provinces and cities that the needs of the people have begun, the infrastructure, ie the level of penetration of smartphones, Internet, 3G … already, but Grab’s service has not yet covered. In the second step, Grab will increase its presence to spread to more provinces and cities, and target the whole country.

In addition, the next big goal is to cooperate with Moca to promote cashless payments and hope to introduce more comprehensive financial services to the people, “said new CEO Grab Vietnam. specify.

Until now, Grab’s position on all fronts has been quite stable. ABI Research’s report said that in the first 6 months of 2019, Grab dominated the market with 146 million hoes, equivalent to 73% of the market share; be 16% market share and Go-Viet 10% market share.

The latest Qandme survey found that 79% of respondents to this market research firm’s survey revealed that they regularly use GrabFood to order food, 55% of people say GrabFood is the app they use most. especially when there is a need to order food. The numbers for GrabFood’s rivals are Now (29%), Go-Food (10%) and Baemin (5%), respectively.

It can be said that in the near future, Grab’s unique position in the Vietnamese market can hardly be moved, so this “unicorn” dares to let a person with little experience in the car-hailing industry like Nguyen Thai Hai Van sat in the highest position. In addition, if considered carefully, the experience that this new CEO has in Unilever’s service days is consistent with the next strategy of Grab Vietnam.

Of all, the area that worries Nguyen Thai Hai Van the most is probably ordering food when in addition to Go-Jek, they also face two very strong rivals, Now and Baemin, who are Asian unicorns – especially Baemin’s appearance. It was thought that the food order market would be like a car ride, businesses that used all their promotions to stabilize the market, when Baemin appeared.

Baemin has no new strategy but to spend a lot of promotion money to attract users like Grab, Now or Go-Viet at the beginning, but still work the same. Of course, it will be time for Baemin to run out of promotions and Grab just need to wait until then.

Ms. Nguyen Hoang Phuong is tasked with maintaining what is there: streamlining the personnel apparatus, improving the quality of the ride-hailing business, not spreading investment

At the end of 2019, Mr. Tran Thanh Hai – founder and CEO of Be Group suddenly announced his departure from the ‘boat’. This is shocking information not only for be’s employees but also for Vietnamese startups, because Mr. Hai is a veteran of the technology startup village and is considered the “soul” of beige.

There has been a lot of speculation surrounding this movement on the top of the beige. The most heard rumor is: VP Bank – Be’s main investor does not continue to “burn money” because Mr. Tran Thanh Hai did not meet previous KPI commitments, while Mr. Hai himself could not call. capital from other investors and investment funds.

Ms. Nguyen Hoang Phuong – Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of be be replaced Mr. Hai in the hot seat.

Tran Thanh Hai’s departure is not merely a change of CEO, but also a transformation of be Be’s business strategy. Before Mr. Tran Thanh Hai left, be canceled plans to expand the market to the food and bill payment segment, despite hiring a lot of highly skilled personnel in building a new field; At the same time, this startup also laid off hundreds of its employees.

Ms. Nguyen Hoang Phuong – CEO BeGroup

” The strategy from 2020 of beGroup is to focus only on developing technology and resources for transportation in the 4.0 era, considering that as the focus and suspend other areas. Thus, focusing resources on one area. only, instead of the previous 4-5 segments, confirms that Be Group not only wishes to maintain its current market share, but also closes the gap with the No. 1 rival in the market.

Vietnam’s transport market grows very attractive with an average of 38% / year. Be just as the growth of the industry has been very good, we clearly define that we have our own customer and driver files and will definitely close the distance with competitors in terms of revenue and number of trips.

Besides the core products such as beBike and beCar, we have been constantly launching new transportation products to better meet the needs of customers.

Regarding the non-financial strategy, in 2020, we will set the highest goal, devote a lot of effort to improve the quality of service. Be desires to become the best quality ride-hailing app in Vietnam. In order to do that, in addition to the intrinsic determination, we also need the strong agreement, support and determination of the driver community.

In 2020, beGroup will do everything it can to further improve quality, “said Nguyen Hoang Phuong, revealing the strategic direction of the beige in the near future on Thanh Nien in early 2020.

“Improving the quality of the best service in the market” is the strategy that many domestic startups fight against foreign startups “strong because of violence for money”; because besides be, Loship is also following this trend. However, this is a strategy only suitable to keep the position, not close to the distance with the market leader; because while the Loship or be focused on improving the quality of service, Grab is doing the same.

Mr. Phung Duc Tuan is expected to be “Mr. Right” of Go-Jek, helping Go-Jek to deploy enough services to create a comprehensive ecosystem in Vietnam.

Both are foreign startups expanding into Vietnam market, but Go-Jek’s path is completely different from Grab. While Grab brings technology, brands and people to Vietnam; Go-Jek only brought technology and cooperated with a local startup to create Go-Viet.

Perhaps Go-Jek’s original intention was that through the Go-Viet alliance, it was able to leverage the power of both, that is Go-Jek’s technological foundation and deep understanding of consumer psychology. natives of founder Nguyen Vu Duc – Linh Nguyen couple, to quickly catch up with Grab. However, reality did not go as expected of Go-Jek.

At the end of March 2019, Nguyen Vu Duc and Linh Nguyen announced their resignation as General Director and Deputy General Director of Go-Viet. At that time, according to a source of Dealstreet Asia, the two executives requested a compensation of $ 800,000, a sign that they were forced to resign by Go-Viet. Go-Viet declined to comment on the compensation information.

In April 2019, Go-Jek appointed Le Diep Kieu Trang – who recently resigned from the position of Director of Facebook Vietnam as CEO of Go-Viet. However, only 5 months later, Trang was removed from the hot seat at Go-Viet. It seems that Go-Jek still cannot find “Mr. Right” for himself in Vietnam market.

Recently, however, after more than a year of vacating the Go-Viet CEO chair, Go-Jek picked up the family member – Mr. Phung Duc Tuan – former Executive Director to succeed; At the same time, the trademark Go-Jek has replaced Go-Viet. Perhaps, after nearly 2 years of joining the Vietnamese car-hailing battlefield, Go-Jek realized that his previous strategy was not right.

Vietnamese consumers’ habits are not like Japanese or Korean, they don’t care much about domestic or international brands, only care about the utilities they receive and the money they have to spend. In addition, Vietnamese people are always known for having an open body mind, ready to receive new things and even a bit ‘foreign’. Grab’s success speaks for itself!

The necessary transfer between Go-Viet and Go-Jek.

” In the past, we developed an app specifically for the Vietnamese market, independent of the Go-Jek app in Indonesia, based on Go-Jek’s technological backing and expertise. goods move between many countries, the need to open many different apps and customize the app according to customer needs is not favorable , “said new CEO Go-Jek Vietnam on the reason for changing the brand.

In addition, the steps in the upcoming period also revolve around the theme of how to improve, expand and expand the products and features of Go-Jek Vietnam.

Certainly the two products of cashless payment services and the four-wheel segment will also be two of the many Vietnamese market products that are quite expected in Go-Jek Vietnam. The unification of technology platform will help Go-Jek Vietnam to launch new products faster. By the time the application is officially launched and then, Go-Jek will share more information, Mr. Phung Duc Tuan added.

” After launching, for the first time, Go-Jek Vietnam will continue to maintain the best of 3 services such as GoBike, GoFood and GoSend as currently. There will be many new features, such as related features. safety – also one of the needs that consumers increasingly want – like sharing a trip itinerary for others, or a trip call emergency button to handle a situation that arises.

Go-Jek Vietnam will also have more features for customers to interact better in Go-Jek’s application, such as the feature that allows customers to chat with each other instead of only customers chatting with the driver, or small programs for customers to participate in and when done, they can receive gifts from Go-Jek “, Mr. Phung Duc Tuan talked about specific strategies of Go-Jek in 2020.

If Phung Duc Tuan is Go-Jek’s “Mr Right” in Vietnam, we may see Go-Jek’s leaps and bounds in the Vietnamese market, worthy of this unicorn position. are available in Southeast Asia market. First, in the Vietnamese market, Go-Jek will fully deploy the services needed to become a profitable super-app like Grab.