There was really no good reason for 37-year-old Kay Kyeongsik Woo to invest in Singapore.

For starters, he's South Korean — as you might guess from his name.

The father of one has a Master's in Statistics from Columbia University and a good business going with a chauffeured vehicle service platform back home and across Asia called easi6.

All this makes us even more perplexed that Woo would devote time and energy into developing TADA, a small non-profit ride-hailing app that was launched here in July 2018.

Yep, non-profit indeed — Woo's company does not take any commission from drivers' ride fares, a drastically different operating model from Grab and Go-Jek, which take 20 per cent in commission from their drivers.

Starting an app here was never part of the original plan

And sure enough, TADA wasn't actually part of his plan. Woo had originally ventured out of South Korea in search of expansion opportunities for easi6 in Southeast Asia in 2016.

However, during his time here, Woo saw that the ride-hailing market, which was dominated (at the time) by Grab and Uber, actually still had space for smaller players.

At the same time, it was an opportunity to test a business model using blockchain — which is what TADA's parent company Mass Vehicle Ledger (MVL; pronounced "Em-Buhl") does.

But the larger reason to compel Woo to even consider doing this was a series of conversations he had with drivers with various taxi and ride-hailing transport companies during his "research" visits here.

It was these, he explains to us in a recent interview, that gave him clear indication there were what he describes as "gaps" left by the larger companies — which, when he found them, he simply couldn't ignore.

The trouble with using cash incentives

After the acquisition of Uber's Southeast Asian presence by Grab, Woo said he observed that on the whole, it seemed to him that drivers (and riders too, actually) were getting increasingly concerned about what they perceived to be the negative impact of a lack of market competition.

Common complaints Woo says he heard from drivers included fewer incentives for both drivers and riders, more expensive fares, and feedback that they said fell on deaf ears.

"Interestingly after consolidation, the quality went down. The customer satisfaction level went down, drivers' income level also went down."

Drivers also complained about not feeling valued, and that they were unable to earn as much as before, he said. They had to work more hours in order to reach past income levels.

After thinking about all this, Woo told us he has a good idea why all this was happening: using cash incentives as a form of reward (what he calls "cash burning") creates a "fake volume" on top of original ride-hailing demand.

Hence, when the incentives dry up, the level of demand falls back to the number of people willing to pay for the actual cost of ride-hailing.

"Drivers are being treated in a very bad manner and their income went down. How can they provide a good service?"

"I'll just say 'yes sir, sorry sir, no sir'."

But the most heartbreaking story for him, and perhaps the one that stirred him into action, was the case of a 60-year-old driver who was previously suspended on another app, possibly due to a user review. However, the actual reasons for that were not communicated to him.

"He mentioned to me that there's a quote that he would tell himself. It's very bad, but he would start his driving by saying to himself, 'I'm a dog, I'll just say yes sir, sorry sir, no sir.' I was like, why do you do that? You don't need to do that. I couldn't understand what was going on."

This, regrettably, doesn't appear to be an uncommon scenario. Trawl any number of local driver groups on Facebook and you'll come across stories of drivers who opine that big ride-hailing players are find it easier to pin the blame on drivers when conflicts arise.

And because of stories like this, Woo said he was convinced of the importance of trying out the model he had in mind for TADA — even though serving the ride-hailing community was not in MVL's original roadmap.

And why Singapore? Here's what Woo had to say:

"Among all the Southeast Asia countries, Singapore is the most developed country and the customers and drivers are all educated. We don't even need to spend money on educating drivers and customers (to use apps to book rides). They're ready to accept a new service that doesn't hurt their user experience."

Just over half a year on from when he first started things, the company has grown to more than 30 employees.