In June 2026, the world’s main Web3 taxi app shall be launched within the Huge Apple.
This ride-hailing app—known as TADA—makes use of blockchain know-how to attach drivers and riders by way of good contracts. Its use of decentralized tech allows better transparency, fairer earnings for drivers, and value financial savings for riders, co-founder Kay Woo informed Fortune in a Dec. 24 interview.
“We don’t work as an intermediary. We are becoming the software for both [drivers and riders] and while they’re using our network, they just need to simply pay a small fee,” Woo says.
TADA was based in Singapore in 2018 by two South Korean tech entrepreneurs: Kay Woo and Jay Han. The ride-hailing app is greatest identified for its “zero commission model”, which prices drivers a flat software program charge (of round 78 to 92 cents) moderately than a lower of their earnings.
The platform has a big and rising share in Singapore’s crowded ride-hailing market, constituting 11.1% of market share in 2022, in keeping with knowledge platform Measurable AI. As of October 2024, TADA introduced in a report $19.8 million in income, up from $15.7 million in 2023.
Since its launch, TADA has expanded to numerous markets in Asia, together with Cambodia and Vietnam in 2019, and Thailand and Hong Kong in 2024. Inside the U.S., the corporate is at the moment trialing its tech in Denver, and plans to launch formally in NYC in June.
The origin story
TADA’s entry to NYC marks a full-circle second for Woo, who had first begun his entrepreneurship journey within the metropolis.
In 2012, alongside a pal, Woo created a social gathering software with the purpose of bringing individuals collectively—however the app flopped.
“I couldn’t sell the product. I come from an engineering and finance background, and my co-founder was an engineer. We were just a bunch of nerds,” Woo says.
After just a few failures, they determined to create a product that may generate income from the get-go, and a ride-hailing app got here to thoughts.
In 2014, Woo and Han moved again to Asia, and got down to digitalise the cross-border mobility companies between the bustling cities of Hong Kong and Shenzhen.
In line with Woo, though Uber and DiDi have been common within the area, ride-hailing apps didn’t but provide cross-border transport companies. As a substitute, automotive rental firms and drivers managed reservations with pen and paper—and Woo noticed a niche available in the market.
After a profitable take a look at run in Hong Kong and mainland China, TADA’s founders formally launched their ride-hailing enterprise in Singapore, selecting the city-state as it’s densely populated and has “superb infrastructure support.”
“Among Southeast Asian countries, Singapore is super important to showcase all other neighboring countries in Southeast Asia,” Woo says. “We got lucky in picking the right place, but also the right time.”
Other than income from its platform charges, TADA has a number of different income streams.
In addition to producing a revenue from the broader Web3 platform by its dad or mum firm, MVL, TADA sells anonymized automobile and driving knowledge—with consent—to ecosystem companions, and presents MVL tokens to be traded on exterior cryptocurrency exchanges.
Journey to the west
After rising the enterprise in Asia, Woo now has his sights set on the U.S., the place he is able to tackle trade giants like Uber and Lyft.
“Whenever I go to New York, I interview the old drivers, and everybody says the same thing: current ride-hailing services take too much commission, but they don’t have any choice,” quips Woo. “We need to give them a choice—Tada is going to be a painkiller for them.”
Woo is an enormous proponent of disruption, believing it to be a necessary tenet of progress.
He alludes to ‘legacy’ ride-hailing apps like Uber and Seize as a part of the “first wave”, which disrupted the standard taxi market. However these platforms have been constructed with capitalistic targets, he says, resulting in skyrocketing platform charges and costs.
“And now it’s their time to be disrupted with a new type of model,” Woo provides.
