Woowa Brothers to shut down its food app in Vietnam this January

Korean Baemin’s representative in Vietnam said that it will close the food app across Vietnam starting January 2021 to better meet the need of customers.

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Baemin vietnam's shippers (photo courtesy of baedal minjok)
Baemin Vietnam’s shippers (Photo courtesy of Baedal Minjok)

The statement was given by Mr. Nguyen Trung Thanh, the representative of Baemin in Vietnam in late November.

“To put better focus on service offerings via [the] Baemin platform, we have decided to shut down [the] entire Vietnammm service”, South Korean giant Woowa Brothers, which owns food delivery brand Baemin, said in the email sent to its partners.

Baemin offers ordinary meals from mom-and-pop kitchens, international cuisine from foreign restaurants — Western, Asian and more — as well as premium brand coffee, tea and desserts from franchise brands, such as Phuc Long, Gong Cha and Koi.

In an interview with DealStreetAsia, Thanh stated that members of the Vietnammm team would be taking on new roles in Baemin’s operations.

As reported by VNE, Vietnammm, founded in 2011, was one of the earliest players to enter the Vietnamese food delivery scene and attracted a strong user base from expat communities in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

In 2015 it acquired competitor Foodpanda’s Vietnam operations from Rocket Internet. On its entry into Vietnam in May last year Baemin bought Vietnammm. Only used in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh city, the two biggest cities in Vietnam, the app focuses on city dwellers only with optimized services.

It is part of Woowa Brothers, a South Korean tech unicorn that was bought by DeliveryHero in a $4 billion deal announced last December.

Founded in 2010, Woowa Brothers is estimated to attract over 10 million active users that make more than 30 million orders each month, as of this year, according to VNF.

Valued at $2.6 billion as of 2018, Woowa Brothers raised $320 million in its latest round of funding led by investment firm Hillhouse Capital in December 2018.

Vietnam’s food delivery market is fiercely competitive, with the big names currently including GrabFood, Sea Group’s Now.vn from Singapore, and GoFood from Indonesian decacorn Gojek.