Asia look out! WeChat is not only rolling out its Easy Taxi service to Singaporean users, but also to its users in Southeast Asia. And the surprises don’t stop there. WeChat is also announcing its unmatched partnership with online food delivery marketplace, foodpanda.
The social networking app is quickly becoming a hit not only as a way for friends and loved ones to stay in touch, but also amongst the transportation, fashion, and now food industries.
WeChat boasts as one of the world’s fastest growing social app with hundreds of millions of users internationally, and with its recent collaborations with big brands such as Zalora as well as its new feature app MojiMe, WeChat is quickly growing to be one of the biggest social apps out there.
With its collaboration with Easy Taxi in Singapore proving to be a hit, WeChat is renewing its partnership with the taxi-booking app to its users in Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines as well.
According to Poshu Yeung, Vice President of International Business Group at Tencent, the company behind the WeChat app: “The response we have had in Singapore was quite overwhelming, and we wanted to offer the same privilege to our users outside of the island-nation.”
Easy Taxi, which was founded in Brazil in 2011, received tremendous positive feedback with its Singaporean users when it introduced its collaboration with WeChat into the market back in December 2013.
Similar to Singaporean users, new users can easily download the WeChat app to their devices and follow Easy Taxi’s official WeChat account (Malaysia: easytaximy; Thailand: EasyTaxiThailand; the Philippines: EasyTaxi_PH) to be able to use the taxi booking function in WeChat.
The partnership that has clearly benefitted its users, is also proving to be a success for both apps as they move towards creating a larger social network. Jianggan Li, Managing Director of Easy Taxi Singapore also mentions how this continued partnership will further supports their regional footprint.
Adding to his statement, Li also mentions how the synergies between both apps will pave the way to greater mobility among smartphone users in our partner cities.
While WeChat is undoubtedly expanding is market, they are definitely not getting complacent as just yesterday, they announced their newest collaboration. And it’s not something related fashion or transportation but with food.
Yes, you heard me, food. And what better way than to form an unprecedented collaboration with one of the world’s leading global online food delivery marketplace, foodpanda. The food delivery service s already operating in 38 countries, and will now allow its users in seven Southeast Asian countries to benefit from this partnership.
But how?
WeChat users will be able to browse restaurants nearby, receive exclusive promotional offers and order food without even having to leave the WeChat app. The seven lucky countries to recieve this service includes Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Philippines and India.
Poshu Yeung from WeChat emphasises on the importance of constant innovation within the social app world in which WeChat is working within.
“Since our launch in 2012, we have rapidly overtaken stalwarts in the mobile messaging realm to become one of the most dominant messaging apps in the marketplace. We attribute our success to providing convenience and a fun and dynamic way to combine messaging, social communication and gaming in one seamless interactive experience; we see a partnership with foodpanda as an extension of giving our customers what they want.”
WeChat’s success is undoubtedly attracting more brands that are willing to expand to better cater to the needs of their customers and those brands include foodpanda and Easy Taxi.
“Our partnership with WeChat across Southeast Asia marks another milestone for foodpanda. We cannot ignore the immense growth of WeChat in these markets and strive to make ordering food as streamlined as possible for our customers. This partnership further solidifies our commitment to convenience.” Said Chinmay Malaviya, Co-founder and Managing Director of both foodpanda Singapore and Hong Kong.
With these new collaborations (and I’m sure not the last we’ll see of them), WeChat is expanding its reach and horizons to greater lengths to better cater to its users. Getting a cab, shopping online or ordering food, is now readily available to all WeChat users thanks to its collaborations with a multitude of popular brands.
All this in one app? I might just be switching over to the greener side that is WeChat.
