Between Uber, Lyft, Didi Chuxing, Gab, GO-JEK, or Ola, the ride-sharing app economy is booming and investors are all-in. Just last month, China’s largest ride-sharing company Didi Chuxing raised $5.5B in funding to compete with Uber and other local apps around the world. We wanted to know how these apps have developed over time in three of our key emerging market countries—Brazil, India, and Indonesia.
We ranked the top three ride-sharing apps in each country by the percentage of users who have that app installed on their device and the average number of daily active users (DAU.) Each country’s ride-sharing economy is different and these rankings reflect that.
Brazil: Uber surpases 99Taxis
For a long time, local ride-sharing app 99Taxis was the top ride-sharing app in Brazil when ranked by both install penetration and DAU. In June 2016, everything changed. Uber was installed on more devices in Brazil than 99Taxis, but their DAU numbers remained almost equal. By October 2016, Uber clearly won the ride-sharing battle in Brazil—it had 3x more DAU than 99Taxis and reached a 6% penetration rate. Not really a surprise, since São Paulo is Uber’s second-busiest city in the world.
Since then, Uber has acquired 4x more DAU than 99Taxis. It seems that 99Taxis feels the pressure from Uber. Earlier this year, Didi Chuxing—China’s largest ride-sharing company—invested in 99Taxis parent company 99 to a tune of $100M. Perhaps the company hopes that Didi’s investment will help them beat Uber at their game in Brazil, just like Didi did to Uber in China in 2016.
India: Uber and Ola Cabs compete for engaged users
Ola Cabs and Uber are India’s dominant ride-sharing players. For a while, local Ola Cabs held off Uber’s competition, but as of October 2016 Uber was installed on 3% more devices than Ola. Yet, Uber has half the DAU’s of Ola. Uber’s challenge in India is not reaching new users, but turning those users into loyal, engaged ones. The issue could be related to India’s laws on using private cars as taxis—a law that Uber is lobbying the Indian government to overturn. Smaller local competitors, like TaxiForSure and Meru Cabs, are installed on some devices, but are far behind Uber and Ola.
Indonesia: Ride-sharing unlike any other country
Ride-sharing in Indonesia looks quite a bit different than it does in India, Brazil, or even the United States. Despite the heavy competition among GO-JEK—a motorbike ride-sharing app—Grab, and Uber, their rankings have remained relatively stable over time. Between September 2015 and October 2016, GO-JEK was the number one ride-sharing app in Indonesia based on DAU ranking and install penetration. By January 2017, Grab was installed on more devices than Uber or GO-JEK, yet the DAU rankings remained unchanged.
Despite the slight penetration drop, GO-JEK is the most actively used ride-sharing app among Indonesians as of January 2017. It has 2-3x higher average daily usage per user compared to Grab and Uber. It’s not all that surprising, considering GO-JEK has differentiated themselves as much more than a motorbike ride-sharing app. Its delivery services now includes food and grocery, courier, cleaning, body massages and beauty, movie tickets, and medicines. Its meal delivery service, Go-Food, claims to be the second busiest on-demand food delivery service when measured by the number of transactions in the world.
Source:Jana