Just a week after their South-East Asia-based rival Grab announced the launch of a beta trial in Yangon, the Uber Myanmar Facebook page has released a short promo clip with the promise that our Uber is ‘arriving soon’.
When Grab announced plans of their pilot scheme, an Uber spokesperson reached out to Coconuts Yangon with a statement echoing the promo clip, namely, that they “look forward to introducing our ridesharing technology in the country very soon.”
Talks of Uber coming to Myanmar were first introduced in January, when Chief Minister Phyo Min Thein said: “We have met with the Southeast Asian [section of] Uber [Technologies Inc.] and learned that since we do not have a systematic taxi association, unlike other countries whose taxi associations protested against [the introduction of Uber], we have a chance to introduce Uber into Myanmar.” In their statement last week, Uber also confirmed that they were working in ‘partnership’ with the Yangon government — a perhaps pivotal business strategy that will give them an edge over Grab and other local ridesharing apps such as OwayRide.
With the release of today’s clip — the Facebook page’s very first update since its creation in February — it’s getting pretty obvious that Uber execs are scrambling to launch the app in Yangon before Grab gets a major headstart. The 18-second video doesn’t specify how soon ‘soon’ is, whether it a trial would be first launched, or any other actually useful information. But this is Uber, and as its first — and at the time of writing, only — commentator wrote, “Ok, we’re also waiting you [sic].”
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