Kakao Mobility held a kickoff meeting with Japan’s leading taxi-hailing service, GO, to discuss expanding collaboration in the mobility sector.
Both companies plan to develop long-term strategies that not only enhance their existing Kakao T roaming service but also eliminate mobility barriers for users in both countries and create economic cooperation models between overseas mobility platforms.
GO was launched in April 2020 after integrating Japan Taxi, operated by Japan’s largest taxi company, Nippon Kotsu Holdings, and Move, a Japanese IT company, DeNA. Last month, it changed its name from Mobility Technologies to GO, and currently, the GO app is available in 90% of Japan’s prefectures.
Kakao Mobility began its partnership with Japan Taxi, the predecessor of GO, by investing 1.5 billion yen in September 2018. At that time, Kakao Mobility was the first foreign company to enter a capital alliance with Japan Taxi, and in 2019 it launched the Kakao T roaming service in Japan, making Japan Taxi Kakao Mobility’s first overseas expansion partner.
Afterward, both companies faced challenges in expanding their collaboration due to the adverse conditions caused by the spread of COVID-19, but recent recovery in travel demand due to the endemic, resuming economic exchanges between Korea and Japan, and Kakao Mobility’s acquisition of the UK mobility platform Split have created favorable conditions for promoting more diverse collaborations in the mobility field.
With Japan’s reopening to tourists, the increase in overseas travelers between the two countries has also served as a driving force to resume collaborative discussions.
During this discussion, the two parties exchanged various ideas for enhancing movement convenience for citizens of both nations.
First, since both countries are dealing with a severe shortage of taxi drivers post-COVID-19, they agreed to explore ways to increase taxi supply and optimize demand-supply through efficient dispatching.
Moreover, they plan to expand integration between the two services to enhance travel convenience for citizens of both countries. Currently, it’s possible for Korean travelers entering Japan to use Japanese taxis linked to GO through Kakao T, but Japanese travelers in Korea cannot use Kakao T taxis through the GO app.
In the future, they plan to discuss how to connect GO users (passengers) with the Kakao T supply side (taxis) so that Japanese tourists visiting Korea can continue using the GO app to access the Korean taxis connected to Kakao T.
Once the bi-directional integration of the GO app and Kakao T app is realized, it is expected to help increase demand in the domestic taxi industry. Both companies aim to ensure that the results of their cooperation can contribute to economic cooperation between Korea and Japan as well as activate the tourism industry.
Additionally, they exchanged opinions on the long-term goal of establishing a ‘Global Mobility Alliance’ (tentative name).
As both GO and Kakao Mobility are creating mobility services based on ‘co-prosperous innovation’ in cooperation with existing taxi industries, they intend to seek cohabitation solutions by forming alliances with like-minded taxi-based mobility platform operators worldwide. The formation of an alliance among global mobility platform operators is expected to create a foundation that can contribute to activating the tourism industry across countries, extending beyond economic cooperation between Korea and Japan’s platforms.
Through this kickoff meeting, both parties established a shared direction for cooperation and plan to hold executive meetings and regular workshops to refine implementation tasks.
Lee Sang-jin daedusj@autodiary.kr