One of the hot topics for discussion these days is the lawsuit filed by Vinasun, a taxi firm, against Grab, an e-hailing app. 

Grab and Uber, the two rivals in the e-hailing market, were the two biggest spenders until April 2018 when Uber announced its departure from Vietnam. 

According to the Ministry of Finance (MOF), in the first three years of operation in Vietnam, Grab incurred a loss of VND938 billion. The figure is expected to climb to VND1.7 trillion by the end of 2018.

Uber had revenue of over VND2.7 trillion in 2014, 2015, 2016 and the first six months of 2017, but reported a loss. The loss was attributed to spending money on sale promotion campaigns.

No super-app in Vietnam has reported profits so far. Analysts believe they will continue taking losses, because they are running sale promotions and offering gifts to partners. 

As the fight for market share continues, super apps will have to spend big money to lure customers.

Some days ago, one of seven food delivery apps, Lala, announced that it would leave  to gather strength on providing online sale solutions.

A local newspaper quoted Truong Bomi, CEO of Lala, as saying that the battle of super apps is the playing field for ‘big guys’ with a lot of money, not for small firms.

There are now more than 10 e-hailing apps in Vietnam. Passengers do not notice their presence because they do not have enough money like Grab and Go-Viet to run costly marketing campaigns.

The competition is challenging not only small apps such as Lala, Ahamove and VATO, but also Zalo, a well known super app with as many users as Grab and Go-Jek.

Analysts commented that it’s now the age of super apps, or all-in-one apps which can satisfy all essential needs in daily life anytime and anywhere. 

App developers, from ride-hailing to chatting, continue to develop into ‘super-apps’ which can be used for many purposes. Grab, Now and Zalo prove to be the biggest players in the competition among super-apps.

Zalo, for example, has e-hailing service (Zalo Taxi), food ordering (Zalo Food), online tourism (Zalo Travel), financial news (Zalo Bank) and e-government related services.

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Hoang Hai