Kakao Taxi revealed toenails by paying… Both passengers and drivers were damaged by’Gapkao tyranny’

Input 2021.03.24 06:00 | Revision 2021.03.24 07:25

After the announcement of the monopoly status, the paid model was promoted one after another.
The more Kakao member taxis expand, the less management is pointed out.

Taxi driver A recently signed up for a membership product worth 99,000 won per month, which Kakao launched. This membership, which receives only 20,000 people on a first-come, first-served basis, provides a function that connects the driver’s desired destination call first, and a map that shows the areas where demand is concentrated in real time. Mr. A said, “There are too many customers due to oversupply, but I felt a sense of crisis that if I was more selected here, the food line would be cut off.” As other articles thought the same, this membership was closed early after three days of release.

Kakao Mobility, a subsidiary of Kakao, which holds 80% of domestic taxi calls, has begun to build a paid model. It is interpreted as a strategy for maximizing profits while restraining competing platforms in the face of the launch of’Wooty’, a joint venture between Tmap Mobility and Uber in April. But in the industry, there is a saying that “it’s actually a hard sell.” In a market that is no different from a Kakao monopoly, the referee changes the rules of the game, but who will not follow it. An industry official said, “It is a reality that there is no other option other than Kakao,” and said, “Kakao is called’Gap’ Kao in the taxi industry and reigns like a king.”

◇ “Kakao’s slaves for both knights, passengers and competing platforms”

According to the mobility industry on the 24th, Kakao has recently started to pay for taxi drivers and competitors. One is Kakao T’s’Pro Membership’, where only 20,000 regular taxi drivers can sign up, and the other is that they will receive Kakao call fees from affiliated taxi operators, so-called brand taxis, such as Tada, Uber, and Macaron Taxi.

Both taxi drivers and competitors, who have become targets for pay, are forced to follow Kakao’s will by crying and eating mustard. Drivers vigorously signed up for membership in order not to fall behind in the’call fight’, and competitors could not realistically receive customers without using Kakao’s taxi application (app), so they had no choice but to pay the Kakao call fee. One taxi driver said, “No matter how good service comes out on a competitive platform, the difference between using cacao and not using cacao is the difference between the sky and the earth.” Because of that, we were trapped in a structure where each other was subordinate to Kakao.”

On the 16th, four taxi organizations, including the National Taxi Trade Union Federation, issued a statement on the 16th and said, “If you agree to a professional membership, intense bleeding competition among taxi workers will inevitably result, and you will eventually fall into a simple platform worker.” Immediately stop the abused market disruption.” Competitors are also concerned that “Kakao has tried to exclude competitors in order to give preferential treatment to its affiliated taxi’Kakao T Blue’.”

◇ Taxi-oriented government policy strengthens only Kakao monopoly

In the industry, it is pointed out that the current relationship was predicted due to the nature of the domestic mobility market, which cannot escape from taxis. Kakao is already holding onto the taxi platform, and it is impatient to regulate every time a new type of transportation service comes out, and it has made Kakao wear more solid.

A representative example is the rental car-based ride sharing service’Tada’, which was stopped by the so-called’Tada Ban Act’ in March of last year. Tada gained attention and emerged from users based on its competitive edge as a system without refusal to ride, a quiet and pleasant environment, and friendly drivers, but the government at that time made Tada illegal under the name of’win-win with taxis’. As a result, the domestic mobility market missed the opportunity to expand the industrial ecosystem, and in the past year, several mobility startups had to close their doors or suffer severe management deterioration. It was the first to stop the service while riding, and Cha-cha, a similar type of rental car business, also quit earlier this year.

The government insists that it can be “the second Tada” if it obtains the’platform transportation business’ license provided in the Tada Ban Act. However, it is said that the number of licenses is limited according to the total amount of taxis, and a certain amount of profits is made to contribute to the taxi industry, so it is still not getting out of the taxi frame. A representative of a mobility start-up said, “As a result, the government policy has been driving Kakao,” he said. “Startups like ours are getting smaller and smaller.”

Scaringly to stop while riding, Kakao began to expand its own brand taxi, T Blue, with the same value as Tada, which is a’satisfactory riding experience’. However, it is being pointed out that Kakao T-Blue, which was at the level of 5,000 in April of last year, reached 10,000 in June, two months later, and increased to 16,000 at present, becoming unmanageable. Drivers are dissatisfied with the decrease in profit per operation because they pay 3-4% of the fare to Kakao, and passengers have to pay an additional cost of up to 3,000 won to use T-Blue, so they are facing a structural problem that does not match each other’s eye level. I have come across. It is evaluated that Kakao’s excessive quantitative expansion in a situation where T-Blue is already in excess has resulted in only downward leveling of service quality.

◇ “Government in a hurry to notice, should take the lead in setting directions”

Experts criticize that whenever a new industry emerges, the government’s approach to mediating between old and new industries is wrong. As we endlessly talk about what we want to say to each other, we can never come up with a proposal that both sides are satisfied with. Before Tada, Kakao’Carpool’ in 2019 was also a case where the government was dragged down by the backlash from the taxi industry and killed it. It is pointed out that in a situation where the fundamental problem of oversupply of 250,000 taxis nationwide is not resolved, the decision-making as of now only repeats the vicious cycle of’the emergence of a new industry-a backlash from the taxi industry-government regulation’.

Kim Hyun-myung, professor of transportation engineering at Myongji University, said, “In the UK and Australia, the government sets out the general principles and then each industry follows a method accordingly.” “When we try to prevent invasion or expand to local transportation, we are hiring local workers based in each region,” he said. Rather than going to extremes, such as blindly blocking, like in Korea, they lead the two sides to find a compromise under a consistent principle. Professor Kim said, “These countries have implemented principle-oriented policies since 2018, and now they are the models that have made a soft landing without conflict and confusion.” “I said.