Call taxi drivers plan to launch their own app

Day by day the technology
is getting improved. Technology has made a drastic change to the society and
the entire mankind. Behind each and everything that we use in our daily life,
there is a technology. The world is entering into the digital era. Everything
is becoming digitalized starting from cab booking to shopping. The decade where
people will wait at the street corner to hail a taxi or cab has greatly
reduced. Now, most of the people book a taxi or the cab using the mobile app.
And the smartphones are the one important factor for the digital world.

The ride-hailing
companies like Ola and uber have already launched their mobile apps, though
which people make some thousands and thousands of bookings per day. And the
cost of the ride in these companies will be little lower than the traditional
taxis. There were many protests and issues happening between the
smartphone-based ride-hailing companies and the traditional taxi drivers and
their associations. These issues were happening since the ride-hailing
companies entered the ride-hailing industry. Taxi associations were fighting
for their rights since that time. Now, they have decided to launch their own
app, the reason behind this decision is as follows. This would be the better
initiative by the taxi associations and taxi drivers.

Chaalak Shakti, a cab
union in capital Delhi has planned to launch their own taxi-hailing app and
this app is named as SEWA, this app could be the rival for Ola and Uber in
India. The union has announced that this initiative is a reaction to reduce the
earnings from Ola and Uber. Many drivers have been protesting in major cities
of India including Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bangalore.

SEWA has been planned to
launch on 7th April 2017. And this ride-hailing platform will have
more than 5000 drivers on its platform. The leader of Chaalak Shakti, Sahdev
Panchal said that the union has contracted many service providers for customer
care, technology, marketing, operations and all the other required services for
the business.

Ola and Uber drivers have
said that their companies will charge about 25% as the commission. The best
thing about SEWA is that it will not charge any commission like Ola and Uber,
but the company charges a monthly fee of Rs. 700.

Initially, SEWA cabs will
only accept cash as the payment option and later other payment options will be
added. When the wallet transaction is introduced, the transaction amount will
directly go to the cab driver’s account; there will be no in-between commission
transactions to the union.

SEWA has planned an
exciting way for building the user base. The ride-hailing giants like Uber and
Ola request their users to sign up for the service, after the sigh-up
procedures they can hail a cab. SEWA has introduced a feature called “Hail and
Go”, in this feature, the user can flag down a cab on the app on the street.
After the rider, gets into the cab, the driver will ask for the user’s phone
number and he will feed this phone number in the fare meter that is built his
the driver’s app, as soon as the driver enters the phone number, the meter will
start immediately, the rider can pay for his ride after reaching his
destination.

The highlight is that
there is no surge pricing in SEWA. But the company didn’t mention the base fare
per kilometer. It didn’t mention how many average trips the driver can make in
a day.

The company has planned
to form a national level union with 80 lakh across the country; they have
planned to do it by the end of 2018. The company has stated that it will invite
drivers from other unions and they have also planned to invite autorickshaws
and black and yellow taxis.

The associations of the
Ola and Uber drivers are planning to launch their own mobile app in Bangalore.
More than 8,000 drivers are involved in this initiative; this initiative has
received the political support from the former Karnataka Chief Minister,
Kumaraswamy. This is one of the great signals for the great start of this
initiative.

Tanveer Pasha, the
president of Uber, Ola, and TaxiForSure drivers and the owner associations has
said that the app will be built in a month after making the formal announcement
from the representatives.

In addition to this, two
of Mumbai’s taxi unions: the Mumbai taxi association and Mumbai Taximen’s union
said that they are planning to launch an app. With the help of this app, users
can book the black and yellow taxi cabs. The taxi associations are making plans
to make a comeback.

One of the biggest heads
of the Reliance group of industries, Mr. Mukesh Ambani let the Reliance Jio and
now, they have planned to launch the ride-hailing service by the end of 2017.
The company has ordered about 600 cars to start their service. The launch of
the Jio’s taxi service will depend upon the commercial launch of the company’s
telecom service. The company has planned to launch this plan after April, but
it may extend up to six months depending upon the commercial rollout.

The company has planned to
compete with the taxi service segment. Mukesh Ambani has announced that the
commercial rollout of the Jio’s telecom services will start from 1st
April 2017. Ambani has also said that Jio has crossed 100 million users.

Another source at the
Reliance group of industries said that Jio has ordered cars for their own fleet
from the automakers such as Hyundai and Mahindra. The company has placed the order
for 600 cars. The idea behind this is to operate their own fleet of cars with
the independent drivers who can join their cars with the Reliance Jio’s cab
network.

There were many rumors
that the company has planned to take on the ride-hailing giants Ola and Uber,
but Jio didn’t make any official announcement regarding this.

Initially, Jio has
planned to launch their services in Chennai and Bangalore and then it will move
to Mumbai and Delhi. They have felt that South India is the better place to
start. From south, it will slowly move to north. The company will follow the
mixed market strategy, where it will not only focus on the major cities, but it
will expand their business in the smaller cities like Bhopal and Jaipur also.

Reliance Jio has planned
to have an Uber-like app, and the development is on the way. The company is
still having discussions about the payment system for its drivers. Mostly, it
will use Jio Money, the company’s own mobile wallet.

The entry of the Reliance
Jio into the telecom market with free data and calling has made a major impact
in India on the profitability and the stock prices. It has changed the India’s
telecom market.

In India, the taxi
companies have served about 500 million rides in 2016 and 130 million rides in
2015. Currently, the ride-hailing market is dominated by Ola and Uber, hope
there will be a change in the future.

            

Anand Rajendran is
the CEO and co-founder of Zoplay, a leading web app development company in
Chennai. Cabily is a taxi software
developed by his company with over clone scripts that fulfills the needs of
both drivers and passengers.