VinGroup’s GSM to enter India’s ride-hailing market with VinFast cars

Vietnam-based taxi company Green and Smart Mobility (GSM) is expected to enter India’s ride-hailing market in February 2026 with a fleet of electric cars from VinFast. GSM is owned by Vietnamese conglomerate Vingroup, specifically its Chairman Pham Nhat Vuong.

“We are going to launch GSM, which is an electric taxi fleet and operations, in India next year…They will be using only VinFast vehicles,” VinFast Asia Chief Executive Officer Pham Sanh Chau said. VinFast is also owned by VinGroup.

India is poised to become the fifth market for GSM, which currently operates in Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines and Laos. What could set GSM apart from rivals like Uber, Ola, and Rapido in India would be its business model, where it owns its entire fleet of electric cars and two-wheelers. 

The company operates both an app-based service and traditional ride-hailing cabs. VinFast just entered India in September with the VF 6 and VF 7, and has around 26 dealerships. Having its group’s own fleet service provider as a captive customer could help VinFast scale its volume quickly in India.

Chau noted that the company will train its drivers to become salesmen for VinFast and incentivize them. “In Jakarta, we have 10,000 cars, we train 10,000 drivers to become 10,000 salesmen. They will also talk about cars when they start driving,” he said.

India’s ride-hailing market has seen strong growth in recent years, with both traditional aggregators such as Ola and Uber, and electric-vehicle platforms competing in the urban mobility business. BluSmart was the country’s first all-electric ride-hailing platform that provided services in cities like Delhi-NCR, Mumbai and Bengaluru.

However, BluSmart, whose fleet was largely comprised of Tata’s Tigor EV and MG ZS EV, recently shut down its service after a regulator probe by the Securities and Exchange Board of India found that its promoters allegedly diverted funds meant for buying EVs into personal assets.