Go-Viet perks up competition in Vietnam’s ride-sharing market

He’s one of the first drivers to sign up with ride-sharing service Go-Viet, but Thanh Hung is still wearing the well-recognized green GrabBike uniform.

“Too many drivers have just signed up for Go-Viet so there are not enough jackets,” Hung said.

The 40-year-old motorbike driver said he was able to make VND800,000 ($34) in a day and a half since he began driving for Go-Viet, much higher than the VND500,000 ($21) he would get from GrabBike for the same work duration.

Hung said he is also attracted by the tax exemption Go-Viet promises for the first six months and the bonus he’ll get if he finishes nine trips a day.

Go-Viet, a Vietnamese version of Indonesian service Go-Jek, entered the Vietnamese market early this month, seeking its slice of the market pie that Grab has been dominating after the departure of Uber.

Aiming to tailor its service to Vietnam with a different name and local teams, one of the first goals of Go-Jek in the country is to recruit drivers.

“The company hopes to bring a stable income to tens of thousands of drivers through technology,” Nguyen Vu Duc, CEO of Go-Viet said in June.

The company had contacted potential drivers months before the launch, either by meeting face to face or talking to them online, its communication representative Huong Cung said.

Grab did not comment on the ploys Go-Viet is using to attract drivers, but it’s also deploying its own strategies.

The company has just launched a campaign to reward drivers with five percent of the total revenue they make in a week, said Nguyen Thu An, communication director of Grab Vietnam.

In early June, Grab also announced a plan to have over 100 stops for Grab drivers with free wifi, coffee and even vehicle washing service in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi.

“There is a large number of drivers who don’t like Grab and want to work for Go-Viet,” said Vu Hoang Tam, a mobile app expert and one of the founding members of GrabBike in Vietnam.

This creates a good supply of drivers for Go-Viet, which has learned a lot from the “previous battle,” Tam said, referring to the competition between Grab and Uber earlier this year.