Cambodia’s Meal Temple launches ride-hailing app in Laos

Meal Temple Group, a tech startup out of Cambodia, has launched a ride-hailing product for taxis and tuk-tuks (auto rickshaws) in Laos.

Photo credit: Meal Temple

The launch of DriveUp follows Meal Temple’s acquisition of Laos-based food delivery platform MyDelivery back in February of this year. In a statement, Meal Temple said its recent move brings it one step closer to its goal of becoming a super app in the country.

“Vientiane is the perfect city to test our service for the first time, as competition is really small, prices are really elastic depending on cars, drivers, and customers, and tourism is growing, so the market is ripe for disruption here,” said DriveUp product manager Angele Fargette.

The company claims to have the largest offer of drivers so far in Laos with more than 100 taxis on its platform and tens of tuk-tuks being trained. It also looks to offer its partner drivers more in-house financial services.

DriveUp, which is available on Android and iOS devices, is planning to add more payment options in the coming weeks, including international credit cards and Alipay, among others.

Meal Temple said it’s looking to capitalize on Laos’ burgeoning tourism industry, which sees more than 5 million tourists yearly. It’s expected to double in the next 10 years to comprise more than 15% of the country’s GDP.

In August this year, Meal Temple made a strategic investment in Bhutan-based startup DrukRide in a bid to expand its food and last-mile delivery business to the country. Through the partnership, the Cambodia-based company would deploy its operations in Bhutan through DrukFood.com.

Meal Temple also invested in Freshgora back in June, announcing that it will work with the Myanmar-based startup to develop an on-demand super app for frontier markets of Asia.