Vietnam, especially major cities, is choked by the increasingly severe impacts of air pollution caused by the alarming upsurge in the quantity of private vehicles and irresponsible consumption. Meanwhile the resources for public transportation are not fully and wisely allocated.
Ride-sharing, thus, has a vital role to play in modern era. Dichung was founded in 2013 with the mission of “improving Vietnam’s environment and Vietnamese living standard through collaborative consumption and advanced technology.” (Mr. Thanh Nam Nguyen - Co-founder and CEO of Dichung said)
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Thanh Nam Nguyen - CEO - Co-founder of Dichung |
In its early time, Dichung’s product concept is building a free ride-sharing network car owners and people with high demand of transportation. Then, Thanh Nam Nguyen, along with his passionate co-workers, expanded their business with taxi-sharing service and intercity car-sharing service to optimize every single empty seat in private cars.
“Sharing car is the new solution for traffic congestion and helps to release pressure on Vietnam’s infrastructure which apparently gives a hand to improving Vietnam’s air quality.” Said Nam, Dichung’s CEO.
Ride-sharing is considered the key factor to build an eco-friendly transportation ecosystem. By combining the idea of sharing economy and technology, Dichung aims at helping both drivers and customers improve their livelihood by saving up to 40% of the amount of commuting fare and reducing gas exhaust by 40%.
According to Mr. Nam, what makes Dichung stand out in technological industry is that it always sticks to the purpose of creating values to every stakeholder. Technology based transportation companies are now majorly run as private on-demand commuting service provider and not friendly with traditional taxi. Meanwhile, Dichung is the very first ride-sharing provider acting as an aggregator between professional taxi provider and passengers focusing on optimizing existing resources.
Looking back to the very first day of Dichung, Nam and his team definitely consider VCIC’s support as one of the key success factors.
“Dichung can get this far on the journey of building a green-transportation community partly thanks to VCIC’s support. “
To translate the rich potential into reality, Dichung appreciate VCIC’s support in terms of both financial support through grants of $15,000. Especially, in 2019, VCIC helped Dichung to gain $500,000 capital raising. Thanks to VCIC’s financial support, Dichung has more resources to develop their own technological systems (websites and mobile applications), which enables themselves to expand to the South and the Central and further opportunities.
In terms of non-financial support, VCIC has helped Dichung to unlock many opportunities to grow via public relations, competency building with training and workshops. These activities open up a certain opportunity for Dichung to access to a network of sustainable development companies, media partners, and investors.
After 6 years resilience and autonomy, Dichung has achieved success in terms of economic growth and overall environment impacts which allows them to keep growing while staying true to their idea of creating a more efficient society. Dichung now enjoys its spectacular 2.43 million kg of CO2 and 24.83 billions VND saved for the passengers.
Dichung succeeded in upscaling their business with one Head office in Hanoi and 2 offices in Danang and HoChiMinh City with over 70 official staffs in 2019, increasing by 60 employees over 6 years period. Along with the development of business scale, Dichung witnessed an upsurge by 300% per year in the revenue from 2015 till now, which might have been hard to reach without VCIC’s support. Dichung’s transfer service, thus has been available in 20 airports and 40 cities all over Vietnam.
With non-financial support, Dichung is supplemented with management skills and technology from experts and through practical experiences of other organizations. Moreover, VCIC has connected DiChung with many media agencies to promote services to potential customers with over 2 billion completed trips within 6 year period!
“You went so far not to go this far.” Nam said.
No matter how far they have gone, Dichung team remains their ambition to spread sharing society to improve Vietnamese eco-friendly transportation experience.