Right when everyone believes the ride-hailing race in Southeast Asia would probably only happen between Singapore-based Grab and Jakarta-headquartered Go-Jek, as both have been expanding aggressively outside of their home turf in their regional expansion push, a new entrant entered the scene from Vietnam.
FastGo, a ride-hailing application developed by Vietnamese NextTech Group, which first launched in June in Hanoi with plans to launch in more major cities in Vietnam, is reportedly aiming to up the game by raising a further US$50 million in a planned Series B round of funding in early 2019.
It has received an undisclosed amount of funding from VinaCapital Ventures, a Vietnamese tech-focused venture capital fund worth US$100 million.
FastGo also aims to enter Myanmar and Indonesia soon.
TAKEWAYS
— FastGo will compete with the current market dominator Grab, which, per an estimation by local authorities, owns more than 50% of the ride-hailing market share. FastGo hopes to outcompete the alien behemoths with its better understanding of the Vietnamese market.
— Go-Jek is also an new entrant to the Vietnamese market. Both Go-Jek and Grab are better funded than FastGo. with Grab’s over US$6 billion and Go-Jek over US$2 billion.
— Vietnam is part of the lesser-developed CLMV (Cambodia Laos Myanmar Vietnam) grouping in ASEAN where consumers have lower disposable incomes but its ride-hailing market is heating up of late.
Editor: Ben Jiang
