Hailo, a well-funded taxi app, expands to Singapore and partners with SMRT

From left: Benny Lim, managing director of SMRT Road Holdings; Ron Zeghibe, co-founder and executive chairman of Hailo Global, and Yu Hsiang Wong, general manager of Hailo Singapore.

The race towards becoming Asia’s top taxi app has intensified. London taxi app Hailo announced its entry today (October 29) into Singapore where it will compete with Uber, Easy Taxi, and GrabTaxi. Its expansion will be boosted by partnerships with SMRT Road Holdings, a unit of transport operator SMRT, and Prime Taxi. The Hailo app is available on iOS and Android.

Hailo did not disclose the number of Singapore cabs in its network, but tells Today that it’s in the “thousands.” The app features credit card payments, making GrabTaxi the only third-party taxi app in Singapore that doesn’t offer the option. GrabTaxi is quite possibly the market leader in the country though, given its large network of cabs and fast-growing revenue.

On how Hailo plans to overcome being late to the party, the company says it has a different booking system from competitors. While others work by giving a booking to the fastest bidder, Hailo works by giving it to the nearest cab. If they decline, it goes to the next nearest taxi. That approach is smarter, Hailo chairman and co-founder Ron Zeghibe tells Today.

Hailo’s partnerships with SMRT and Prime are significant because smaller taxi operators have more incentive to work with taxi apps. Given their smaller fleet sizes, it makes less sense for them to create their own booking app which wouldn’t stand up to the biggest player – Comfort – anyway.

It’s the same trend we’re seeing in India, which has a much more unregulated taxi industry. There, thousands of taxi operators vie for tiny slices of the market, presenting a perfect opportunity for taxi apps to make a difference.

Asia is a do-or-die market for Hailo, especially since it quit the US due to intense competition. In August, Tech in Asia reported that Hailo was moving to enter Singapore. It sought to hire a general manager in the country, we were told by sources.

The person would oversee customer acquisition and market expansion in Singapore. He or she will work with regulators to ensure that the company doesn’t run afoul of the law. The GM will also have to build a team of public relations, marketing, operations, and customer support staff, while managing partnerships with taxi drivers.

Zeghibe did not confirm the move then. Nonetheless, he said: “Hailo is looking at opportunities all over the world, and Singapore is likely to feature in our plans in the near future – as it would for any company with global ambitions. Our strategy is to improve the taxi experience for both drivers and passengers in all the markets in which we operate.”

The startup essentially has a booking app that sits on top of existing taxi networks. In this way, it works like GrabTaxi and Easy Taxi. Both of these companies have gained mainstream awareness in short order and are now expanding rapidly across Asia. Uber is another competitor to watch out for. While it uses cars from limousine companies to serve customers, it recently brought its far cheaper UberX service to Asia and launched UberTaxi in Hong Kong.

All these companies have attracted sizable funding for international expansion. Uber has US$1.5 billion, GrabTaxi secured US$75 million, while Easy Taxi grabbed US$77 million. Hailo is roughly on par with Easy Taxi.

Singapore and Asia make sense as the next expansion markets for the London startup. Uber is dominant in the United States, and it has not hesitated to bare its fangs against competitors like Lyft. In Asia however, the field is still uncluttered. Uber entered the region in 2013, while the other apps became popular only in 2014. Singapore also makes sense for its tech-friendly regulations.

While governments worldwide have treated technology with suspicion, Singapore has embraced them. It is working on creating a crowdfunding legal framework, allowed Bitcoin companies to operate within constraints, and is relaxed about drone flights zipping about in the city-state. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in a speech:

We have taxis, good service by taxi drivers but there is also competition from Lyft, from Uber, from apps. Technology is changing all our jobs and these changes are going to happen whether we like it or not. And we cannot stop this change, we cannot escape this change. The only way is to know which way the world is going, use this to our advantage and get there where we need to be, faster than our competitors and that is what the government is trying to do.

See more: Uber finds peace in Singapore while facing brickbats in the rest of Asia

Hailo, a well-funded taxi app, expands to Singapore and partners with SMRT