Asia Digest: Meal Temple Launches Ride-hailing In Laos; Yanolja Offers Flight Search

Cambodian startup Meal Temple Group has launched its ride-hailing service, DriveUp.app, in Laos while South Korean budget hotel platform Yanolja has signed a partnership with the global travel search engine KAYAK and officially opened flight search services. 

Meal Temple Group launches ride-hailing service in Laos 

Cambodia’s Meal Temple Group has launched ride-hailing service, DriveUp.app, in Laos covering the modes of  taxis, tuktuks, and samlors for the first time in the country, according to an announcement.

The move comes shortly after it expanded food delivery services from Cambodia to Laos.

“Vientiane is the perfect city to test our service 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 Angele Fargette, product manager for DriveUp.app in Laos.

Meal Temple Group claims that it already has over 100 taxis on its platform and tens of tuktuks being trained to join, making it the largest driver network so far in the country.

Recently, Meal Temple Food announced that it is investing in DrukRide, a transportation app in Bhutan.

Its Bhutanese expansion follows inroads into other frontier markets in the region since earlier this year. It had acquired Laotian startup MyDelivery from Kiwi Group before making a minority stake investment in Myanmar-based Freshgora.

Last year, Meal Temple Group announced that it raised a six-digit sum from Australian and European investors.

S Korea’s Yanolja opens flight search service

South Korean budget hotel platform Yanolja has signed a partnership with global travel search engine KAYAK and has officially launched its flight search service, according to an announcement.

KAYAK is a subsidiary of Booking Holdings, a meta search engine brand that provides information on various travel products, including air tickets, hotels and rental cars. It is also a big data company that processes over 2 billion search data annually.

With this partnership, Yanolja will provide information from more than 2,500 airlines and travel agencies. The budget hotel platform expects to provide real-time search results that can offer faster and more accurate flight information.

Yanolja, backed by Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte. and Booking Holdings Inc, plans to expand its service scope and strengthen its global competitiveness through partnerships with major global operators in the future.

Recently, it acquired Indian lodgings management platform eZee Technosys to expedite expansion beyond its home market.

In 2018, the Seoul-based startup announced an investment in Southeast Asian budget hotel chain Zen Rooms, tapping one of the world’s fastest-growing travel segments.