[단독]#1 Kakao T’s warning “Uber and Tada, pay money and receive calls”

Korea’s leading taxi calling platform, Kakao T, is pushing ahead with a plan to increase the platform entry threshold for competitive taxi calling services. The intention is to prevent branded (member) taxi drivers operated by services that compete with Kakao T such as Tada, Macaron Taxi, and Uber from doing business by receiving Kakao T calls for free.

Kakao T’s operator Kakao Mobility recently proposed business alliances to major domestic affiliated taxi operators such as VCNC (Tada), Uber Korea Technology (Uber), KST Mobility (Macaron Taxi), and Konatos (Ban-Ban Taxi Green). In order for each company’s affiliated taxis to receive general calls from Kakao T, they must form an alliance and pay a fee. An official from Kakao Mobility said, “There are many cases where other affiliated taxis receive general calls collected by Kakao T and operate them.”

Kakao Mobility, the No. 1 mobility platform in Korea, is showing off its strength in earnest. It is an evaluation that it contains the meaning of “warning” that the market will not fluctuate to potential competitors such as Uber and Tmap Mobility (a subsidiary of SK Telecom) that will set up a joint corporation next month with Soka and VCNC, which are operating Tada Light. .

Kakao T, which started as Kakao Taxi in 2015, has established itself as an unrivaled intermediary platform between taxi drivers and passengers. It dominated the market thanks to free calls from app users to taxi drivers. Currently, there are 230,000 taxi driver members and 28 million app subscribers. If Tada, Macaron Taxi, and Uber reject the proposal, 28 million calls will be missed.

Affiliated Taxi is a business that supports the brand and management know-how of the main store, like Paris Baguette and Tous Les Jours, and receives affiliate funds from each store owner. When the amendment to the Passenger Vehicle Act passed by the National Assembly in March last year effectively banned mobility services other than taxis, member taxis became a representative business model in the mobility industry. Although it is a taxi, it can provide a better service by combining it with the platform.

As of January 25, there were 3,539 member taxis nationwide. There are 8 operators. The problem is that, with Kakao T already dominating the general call brokerage market, the number of calls that a late-coming franchise service provider can give to taxi drivers is insufficient. For this reason, taxi drivers often use the affiliate service app and Kakao T together.

A representative of a member taxi operator said, “We tell the driver to only call us, but it is difficult to control that a driver out of the office receives multiple calls from multiple mobile phones.” He said, “Because you have to meet the standard amount of ten thousand won to get your salary properly, you have no choice but to be sensitive to calls.”

It is argued that if left as it is, the platform competitiveness will decrease.

① Confusion: Kakao Mobility claims that “a passenger user calls a taxi with the Kakao T app, but the user gets confused when he comes to Uber or a ride.” For example, I opened the Paris Baguette sign and entered it, but it is like selling Tous Les Jours bread. An official from Kakao Mobility said, “Some taxi drivers give promotional materials for their affiliates to passengers and promote them to use their services next time.”

② Inconvenience: When a taxi driver receives a call from Kakao T and then calls from his own platform, the call to Kakao T is often canceled. It is because the affiliate platform call must be digested first.

There are many positions in the industry that they will watch until a more specific content comes out. However, there is a lot of dissatisfaction with the fact that Kakao Mobility operates its own affiliated taxi Kakao T Blue (16,000 units) while providing a general taxi call brokerage service. In terms of an e-commerce platform, it is a structure that mixes open market (general taxi) products and own PB products (member taxis). For this reason, complaints about the differential distribution of calls among taxi drivers continue to come out.

There is also an atmosphere that is wary of the platform power of Kakao Mobility. Gyeonggi Province’s Fair Trade Bureau, created by Gyeonggi Governor Lee Jae-myung, asked the Fair Trade Commission to investigate the allegations that Kakao Mobility drove calls to Kakao T Blue last year. A representative of a mobility start-up said, “We are watching the situation, not specific details such as the amount of money and the plan to ban the acceptance of calls.”

Reporter Park Min-je [email protected]