Back in 2017, Souliyo Vongdala, co-founder of LOCA recalled that many people complained about how Grab and Uber are not in Laos at all.

“Nobody looks into this market at all. People think we are too small,” Vongdala said.

At that time, he remembered having to take a day off just to pick his friends visiting from other countries and to drive them around the city and for lunch and dinner.

It got him thinking. “Why there aren’t many people using taxis in Vientiane?” he recalled asking the question, that prompted him and his team to dig deeper.

“We surveyed and did many studies on this matter. What we found was interesting,” Vongdala said.

There’s no transparency

The transport service in Laos has a bad habit of ripping tourists off, leaving the visitors no choice but to agree with the pricing determined by the driver.

Along with co-founders Johnny Sayasane and Jettana, Vongdala concluded that many of the tourists visiting the country have no idea about the pricing structure or the sensible rate of the taxi. The lack of information is something that a ride-hailing like LOCA can tackle.

No reliability

Security issues like the identity of the driver ended up not being in the taxi company’s system is also another common thing to find at that time.

Vongdala said this issue allows drivers to cancel anytime they want without any precautions or sanctions to follow, simply because they aren’t under authority.

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Vongdala also found that many of the Taxi doesn’t have insurance.

“Or if they have insurance, it is more likely a compulsory package. This doesn’t protect the passengers in the car,” he said.

No taxi in sight

Another issue to highlight was how taxis in Laos don’t drive around to find customers.

“Instead, they sit at the taxi stand waiting for the customers. These taxi stands are mostly available where tourists stay the most. So what happens is if you stay a little bit outside of the centre area, you are out of luck to access the taxi,” Vongdala explained.

From those findings, LOCA was born. It was co-founded by Souliyo Vongdala, who is the co-founder and CTO of BIZGITAL, with Jettana and Johnny Sayasane, who’s also the co-founders, COO and CCO -respectively- of BIZGITAL, focussing on branding and marketing of the company.

The challenge began

“The real challenge lies in getting people in Laos to understand the concept of ride-hailing. It’s really difficult,” Vongdala said.

There’s a stigma around the job as a taxi driver, considering it as a non-fancy job for the people. “Especially those who can afford a car anyway,” Vongdala added.

It was where the branding message around LOCA is centered: driving for LOCA is not the same as driving a taxi and it is cool.

“Even businessmen like myself drive for LOCA. That’s what we introduce in the video. I used myself as an example of what kind of person would drive for LOCA,” Vongdala explained.

His instinct wasn’t wrong as it got people’s attention, not only from the driver’s side but also on the passenger’s side.

After that, what’s left is delivering the punch. “We have been trying to convince people that they can actually earn extra money by doing this. In the first month, we had a small number of customers and had only 15 trips per day. We started to introduce promotions and incentives to the drivers and passengers, that was where we started to see traction,” said Vongdala.

Data-driven operation

Since it started a little over a year ago, Vongdala admitted that LOCA’s GMV has grown to 600 per cent with almost 17,000 customers.

“Centering our operation around data, I can say that we are able to control the business quite well. We are already in the process of expanding to all major cities in Laos,” Vongdala confirmed.

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Besides expanding to major cities, LOCA plans to add more services related to transportation.

“Soon we will introduce a new service in collaboration with the minivan association in which they will have more than 240 vans registered on our platform,” Vongdala said.

Using its app, LOCA not only provides the ride-hailing service but also insightful content about the city the tourist is visiting. With LOCA app, the tourist will be able to know where the interesting events are, which is the best restaurant, the hidden local food,s and so on just like a local.

Customers can now book an on-demand ride, premium private city ride, flat rate, and minivan flat-rate tour.

What is happening in Laos

LOCA is one of the frontrunners when it comes to the emerging startup scene in the country.

“Many startups now are eying the Laos market. We recently saw Foodpanda enter Laos to compete with the local brand GoTeddy. However, many startups in Laos were not covered by the regional media as much,” Vongdala added.

Despite thinking that Laos is a fast-growing economy that makes it also a good place to start a startup, Vongdala said that the internet infrastructure just got better in all the cities in Laos, but with the exception of those in the least populated area.

According to Vongdala, Lao Telecom just introduced a pilot 5G network recently. The government also has supported the promotion of Laotian startup domestically and regionally.

Vongdala believes that the potential hidden in Laos just needs to get a buzz. Laos’ market needs more startups so that it can “drive the young generation to want to work hard to take the startup path or work for a startup”.

It looks like the future will start to fairly include and take notice of Laos, and finally stop forgetting that it’s actually a part of Southeast Asia.

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Picture Credit: LOCA

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