New Paradigm Investment makes follow-on investment in Tagogayo

New Paradigm Investment announced on the 30th that it had made a pre-Series A investment in ride-sharing startup Tagogayo. The investment follows its initial investment in Tagogayo in December 2019.

Tagogayo is a vehicle-matching platform that partners with vehicle providers—including more than 30,000 commercial call vans, taxis, and rental cars nationwide—to offer shared van rental services at airports across the country, including Incheon International Airport.

Unlike existing car-hailing services in Korea, which are provider-focused, Tagogayo gives customers the final say through a van comparison and booking service that lets them compare fares, vehicle types, and reviews and choose a ride themselves.

Customers enter details directly on the platform, such as pickup time, origin and destination, and number of passengers. Drivers then submit offers with their terms and prices through a reverse-auction system, allowing customers to choose their driver.

“We plan to expand beyond our existing airport van service into a range of related services, including hospital escorts, weddings, golf, and military leave transportation, with the aim of making travel more convenient and customer-focused,” said Tagogayo CEO Choi Soon-sung. “The platform currently handles about 1,000 transactions a month and has around 405 registered partner vehicles. With this follow-on investment, we plan to expand our partner fleet to 2,000 vehicles by the end of next year.”

Tagogayo’s customized mobility booking service, which began full-scale commercialization early last year, has signed up approximately 12,000 individual members and 192 corporate members in just one year. It achieved this through customer-focused service innovation despite challenging conditions caused by COVID-19, including restrictions on outings and weaker consumer sentiment.

Tagogayo is currently operating actively, with around 250 vehicles in the Seoul metropolitan area and approximately 405 nationwide in its supply network.

“Despite the decline in overseas travel, demand for domestic travel and transportation has grown, and Tagogayo, a consumer-focused travel mobility platform, is setting new monthly sales records,” said Park Je-hyun, CEO of New Paradigm Investment. “We also expect overseas travel to drive significant growth in the post-COVID era. Tagogayo’s distinctive strength is its reverse-auction system, which gives users more choice and encourages drivers to compete for customers, improving service quality. In an era of hyper-personalization, we expect Tagogayo—with its business potential in on-demand long-distance transportation—to grow into a homegrown Korean mobility brand.”