The announcement confirmed a Reuters report, which claimed that GSM was targeting a debut in Hong Kong by 2027, potentially marking the first initial public offering (IPO) in the city by a Vietnamese company.

Founded in 2023 by Vingroup and VinFast head Pham Nhat Vuong, GSM runs Vietnam’s largest all-electric taxi fleet under the Xanh SM brand, using vehicles exclusively supplied by Nasdaq-listed VinFast.

“There have been advisory views suggesting a valuation of around $20 billion. However, we continue to consult a range of perspectives. Any eventual valuation would depend significantly on the timing and market conditions at the time of listing,” Vingroup added.

If GSM achieves such a valuation, the two-year-old ride-hailing company will end up rivalling its closest competitor, Nasdaq-listed Southeast Asian Grab, which has a market capitalisation of approximately USD 21 billion. Grab is also known as Southeast Asia’s dominant “super app,” starting as a ride-hailing service, “My Taxi,” in 2012, to offer safer transport.

The business further evolved to include food and grocery delivery, digital payments (GrabPay), financial services, and more, becoming the region’s first decacorn by solving local needs like cash payments and motorbike transport. Grab also acquired Uber’s SEA operations and got listed on NASDAQ in 2021. Not only Grab, but also rivals like Uber, Lyft, and Indonesia’s GoTo all have their stock market presence.

While Vingroup did not give a location or a concrete timeline for GSM’s listing, it confirmed a listing would not occur in 2026. Two sources had indicated the valuation could range between USD 2 billion and USD 3 billion, with one suggesting GSM was looking to raise at least USD 200 million and that the valuation would factor in debt. Both sources requested anonymity due to the confidentiality of the information, reported Reuters.

The IPO plan, still tentative, would mark Vingroup’s second overseas listing after electric-vehicle maker VinFast’s Nasdaq debut in 2023. The collaboration between GSM and VinFast has supported VinFast’s domestic sales while enabling GSM to scale up without bringing third-party suppliers into play. VinFast’s sales to GSM accounted for 26% of its total by Q3 2025, down from 72% in 2023.

As per reports, a Hong Kong listing would offer deeper liquidity and stronger investor appetite for electric vehicle and mobility plays versus Singapore or Nasdaq, where VinFast has faced liquidity challenges tied to a small free float. The move would also fund GSM’s regional growth, strengthening its position in Southeast Asia’s competitive market and, most importantly, easing financial pressures on Vingroup and Vuong as VinFast continues its costly expansion and development efforts.

GSM held about 40% of Vietnam’s ride-hailing market in the first quarter of 2025, versus Grab’s 32%, data from research firm Mordor Intelligence showed. Rakuten Insight, however, estimated Grab’s share at 55% and GSM’s at 35%. GSM has expanded into Laos, Indonesia, and the Philippines, and is exploring an entry into India.

The post VinFast-linked GSM plans Hong Kong IPO, to rival Grab appeared first on International Finance.

In July 2023, the company that runs the Citibike service in New York City and similar rental programmes in other key American cities announced that it was investigating options for the unit due to “strong inbound interest.”

“We are discontinuing our dockless scooters in Washington, DC, and are exploring alternatives for our dockless bikes and scooters in Denver,” the company said.

The business will rename its bike and scooter division as “Lyft Urban Solutions” as part of the transition.

In many American cities, the company partners with Bird and Spin to provide access to its fleet of bikes and scooters through the Lyft app; it does not operate its own fleet of vehicles.

At the 2023 end, Lyft announced that it would lay off approximately 1% of its nearly 3,000 employees and incur charges of between USD 34 million and USD 46 million, most of which were related to asset disposal costs.

The company stated that by the end of 2024, adjusted operating income will have increased by roughly USD 20 million on an annual basis thanks to cost savings from the restructuring, enhanced operations, and better sales strategies.

While Uber Technologies is emerging as a fierce competitor for Lyft, the latter’s poor September quarter forecast raised doubts about its capacity to handle this competition.

Since David Risher became Lyft’s CEO in early 2024, he has reduced employment while also introducing new initiatives and higher driver earnings to increase rideshare demand.

Meanwhile, Lyft has debuted a new feature designed to help commuters stay within budget.

“To make your day more predictable, we’re launching price lock, a new subscription that caps the price of your regular commute. We know reliable pricing is particularly important for commuters. They know what their ride should cost and hate it when prices change,” Audrey Liu, executive vice president of rider experience at Lyft, said on the company’s blog recently.

According to the blog post, the subscription lets customers pay USD 2.99 per month to lock in a commute price, capping the price of rides they take regularly, a system that Lyft says lets riders save up to USD 40 each month.

“If the price of the ride is lower than your locked-in price, you’ll pay the lower rate. Your locked-in price will be protected, even during peak hours. No need to keep checking prices,” the company blog remarked.

Lyft is also reportedly working with United Way and Goodwill to help job seekers get to their interviews. And for people who have just landed jobs, and shared that news on LinkedIn, Lyft will reward them by sponsoring their rides for their first work week.

The post Lyft to stop dockless bikes, scooter operations in restructuring drive appeared first on International Finance.

As of January 2019, there are more than 300 unicorns around the world. A variant of the unicorn is the decacorn, which refers to companies valued at over $10 billion.

Other types of startups include ‘my little pony’—a startup worth $10 million or more; a ‘centaur’—a startup worth $100 million or more; a ‘quinquagintacorn’—a startup worth $50 billion or more; and a ‘unicorpse’—a former ‘unicorn’ now valued at less than $1 billion. Although the vocabulary may sound ridiculous, the development of these new industry jargons represents the vast proliferation of startups all over the world, in the past decade.

This coming year is expected to be shaped by decacorn IPOs, with at least five of the nine US-based startups valued at more than $10 billion by private investors expected to go public in 2019. But exactly how long does it take for them to reach decacorn status?

RS Components has investigated how quickly it took some of the world’s leading businesses to go from unicorns to decacorns.Of the ridesharing startupsaiming for success Uber, Lyft, Didi Chuxing, and GrabTaxi have already hit $10 billion.

• Uber is likely to fetch a valuation of between$90 billion and $100 billion, following its IPO later this year, despite Wall Street banks’ proposing a valuation of $120 billion. Recently, the company was valued at $76 billion in the private fundraising market

  

• Didi Chuxing, among Uber’s biggest rivals, is one of the fastest companies to transition from unicorn to decacorn status

• US-based ride hailing app Lyft was valued at $24.3 billion in its IPO this year, according to Reuters

• GrabTaxi is a Singapore-based technology company that offers ride-hailing in Southeast Asian countries, and it took just three and a half years to go from unicorn to decacorn status

The transportation network giant Uber, founded in March 2009, reached unicorn status in August 2013, only four years and five months after starting up. Uber offers on-demand private cars and food delivery—the company has operations in 785 metropolitan areas worldwide. The on-demand transport service reached decacorn status 10 months later in June 2014, much sooner than the global average.

Similarly, Didi Chuxing, reportedly looking at a $80 billion valuation from its still in the works IPO, is a Chinese ride-sharing, artificial intelligence, and autonomous technology conglomerate. Headquartered in Beijing, the company offers services including private car-hailing, social ride-sharing, and food delivery to Chinese users through smartphone. Didi Chuxing reached decacorn status only six months after reaching unicorn status in December 2014, two and a half years after being founded.

Lyft, a ridehailing unicorn from the US,is in its initial weeks as public company and it is in a stiff competition with Uber. Lyft was valued at $24.3 billion in its IPO this year. The company priced its IPO at $72 per share, which was slightly above its initial offering between $70 to $72 per share. However, at the start of its IPO roadshow, the company had disclosed a price range between $62 to $68 per share.

Despite its name, GrabTaxi is not just a taxi service—it offers food delivery services too. At the young age of two and a half years, it reached $1 billion (unicorn status) in valuation. Just three and a half years later it hit the decacorn status and is currently valued at $11 billion.

So, why is the on-demand transportation industry doing so well in reaching its unicorn and decacorn milestones? The ease of adoption of technology has helped these companies to create apps that make getting from A to B far easier and quicker.     

The total number of decacorns grew 67 percent from 2017 to 2018. So, what can we expect to see in 2019 with the new wave of unicorns rising through the ranks?

Summer seems to be the season for ‘decacorn-ing’ with 45 percent of decacorns achieving their status in June or July of 2018.While predicting trends, we can expect to see new companies reach unicorn and decacorn status or go for IPOs around this summer, too. But which type of companies can we expect to see in that league?

According to CB Insights, the technology and mobile service industries are among the easiest ones to achieve unicorn status in. A new algorithm used alongside CB Insights data helps predict the companies that are expected to become unicorns and decacorns.

The 50 predicted future unicorns hail from various industries and the median company has received about $111 million in total funding. The majority are based in the US, with 22 from California, five from New York, and two from Massachusetts.

Some of the companies that are expected to reach unicorn status in 2019 are in the technology industry and include mobile software as well as internet services startups. MapBox is a company based in the US that is a large provider of custom online maps for websites and applications such as Foursquare, Lonely Planet, Facebook, the Financial Times, The Weather Channel, and Snapchat. Not only is MapBox worth $225 million, but it is working alongside some of the biggest brands in major industries, so, it is likely to become a unicacorn in the summer of 2019.

C2FO is a fintech company that takes control of your capital to help improve cash flow. Founded in 2008, the company is now worth $200 million. C2FO was also previously known as Pollenware. Not only is the company in CB Insights’ top 50 companies to possibly achieve unicorn status in 2019, but it also ranks ninth.

The total number of decacorns grew 67 percent from 2017 to 2018 (from 12 to 20). At the rate companies are progressing to unicorn status we can expect to see more and more of them achieving decacorn status in 2019.There are currently over 20 companies in the ‘decacorn’ club and it’s predicted that this figure will increase to 30 by 2021.

The post How many startups will achieve unicorn and decacorn status in 2019? appeared first on International Finance.

The IPO filing with the US SEC showed that Uber had 91 million monthly average users worldwide across its platforms. This includes the total number of users for ride hailing and food delivery.

The number of monthly average users rose by just a third over 2017 last year compared to a 51% rise in 2017 over 2016. Revenue growth also decelerated with just 41% in 2018 over 2017. This compares with a revenue growth of more than 100% in 2016.

Increasing the pressure on Uber’s management is the fate of competitor Lyft. Lyft saw its share price close 15% below the IPO price set last month on Thursday.

Uber’s IPO presentations or roadshows will begin on April 29. The company will then price its IPO and the shares will debut on the NYSE in the first week of May.

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