What's next for the "drops"?

With the explosive growth of the online car rental industry and the increasing number of traffic accidents and customer disputes, online car rental platforms across Asia are striving to improve their service quality.

Industry leaders such as China's Dropshipping and Singapore's Grab are exploring new ways to improve ride-hailing safety while retaining quality drivers that other platforms also covet.

The online taxi business model was first popularized by Uber in the United States. The Chinese market has since caught up and quickly overtaken the US market in size, which is now almost twice the size of the US.

In April this year DDT launched a proprietary system where companies offering online taxi services can manage their fleet and cash flow on an APP. DDT hopes to have 1,500 ride-hailing companies using the system by the end of this year.

In the traditional model of internet ridesharing, individual owners provide the service at their own leisure time. Now, however, more and more companies are organizing dedicated fleets of vehicles and drivers to provide online taxi services, and there are about 6,000 such companies in China alone.

DDT collects data on about 30 million vehicles every day. Its new system, developed after seven years of data collection and risk management work, is one that DDT hopes will help these companies implement better safety prevention and control and become more profitable.

DDT has grown rapidly. in 2015 DDT merged with then-rival Express Taxi and in 2016 acquired Uber's China operations, and it now claims to have550 millionUsers. Despite occupying a 60% share of the Chinese market, DDT is not a household name abroad. Cheng Wei, CEO of DDT, plans to strengthen its investment in overseas markets.

Meanwhile, Grab, dubbed the "Southeast Asian version of DDT," has launched a program in parts of Indonesia to retain quality drivers and prevent them from switching to other platforms. Drivers with a score of 4.7 or above and meeting certain sales targets will be named "Elite + (Elite +)" drivers, who will earn 20% more per single than ordinary drivers. 2018, Grab acquired Uber's business in Southeast Asia, and now the Southeast Asian market is divided between Grab and Indonesian rival Go-Jek. rival Go-Jek. Both companies are on the list of the world's 17 "decagonal beasts" (companies with market capitalization of $10 billion or more that are unlisted).

Latecomers are also fighting to gain a larger share of the netbook market. FastGo, a Vietnamese online taxi company, launched FastBike Pro online motorcycle service this year, which only allows drivers who have passed the company's interviews and screenings to join. In FastGo's view, in order to break the situation in Vietnam, where the market is currently dominated by Grab, it needs to select better drivers. Drivers in its "Pro" program get a higher share of fares and a guaranteed income for a period of time. Currently, "Pro" has recruited about 500 drivers.

According to an analysis by Statista, a data statistics company, revenues from online ride-hailing services in major Asian economies are expected to reach $49 billion in 2019, while China will account for $35.5 billion. The figure is expected to reach $85 billion in Asia by 2023, with China accounting for $62.1 billion.

DDT is highly influential in the Chinese market. But in Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia, the online taxi market is all becoming increasingly competitive, and competition is driving companies to try to find ways to meet the unique needs of different target markets in these economically and culturally diverse regions.