"Don't buy a car, get TaxiForsure App and travel hassle-free"

Travel smart and reach your destination faster with TaxiForSure App, an aggregator of one of the largest taxi chains in India. Book your taxi at the quickest and experience the most convenient way to travel.

During the Indian Retail and eRetail Congress and Awards 2015, Retailer Media caught up with G Raghunandan, Owner, TaxiForSure, to know his vision about the future of Taxi business in India.

Can you please talk to us about TaxiForSure and its business model?

TaxiForSure is an aggregator of taxis in India. We work with a bunch of fleet operators who own taxis and employ drivers to drive those taxis and provide a single point of access for the customers to book a taxi through the system. We believe that more numbers of taxis are owned by these fleet operators in India than individual drivers and by aggregating these fleet operators, the probability of finding taxis with TaxiForSure is much higher compared to other competitors in India.

What were the roadblocks you faced while rooting TaxiForSure in the Indian market?

The challenges were plenty. The first and the biggest one was the technology adoption. The way we started tracking the taxi was to provide a Rs. 5000 smartphone and asking the drivers to charge it and start interacting with it. And majority of these drivers were not comfortable using a smartphone. Helping them essentially how to engage with a smartphone, and explaining them how it will benefit their lives was a difficult task to do.

Second was on the demand chain, customers were comfortable booking taxis through a phone call. So, the challenge was to change their behaviour, telling them that a mobile app is lot more convenient, comfortable and transparent.

What are you future expansion plans?

We are already operating in 60-plus cities in India and going forward, we will probably be in another 100 cities, let’s say by the end of 2015.

How is the consumer behaviour in tier II and III cities compared to that of a metropolitan city?

Customers are still not really confortable in tier II and III cities. The cities are smaller and so people probably prefer 3-wheeler auto rickshaws to travel. They still have this mindset that a taxi ride is a premium segment and we are essentially trying to remove that. Taxis are expensive because there are not enough customers. If there will be more number of customers, the taxi rides will automatically become cheaper, and this is what we are trying to communicate in tier II and tier III market.

Can you put some light on the investment front of TaxiForSure?

After merging with Ola, the combined entity raised to $400 million. I don’t think any other company in India would have seen the kind of growth we have seen. The market potential is huge, customers are adopting this technology and we are able to manage the scale as well, that is the reason why investors are backing us.

Where do you see this business five years down the line?

Five years later, what we are really looking at is customers not buying personal cars. We want to eliminate the entire personal car market. Driving is a hectic job for many of us. Finding parking spaces, servicing the car, these are all time taking jobs to do. But if you book a taxi, within 2 minutes, the taxi will reach next to you. You won’t have to worry about all these hectic parts. Also, it is a lot cheaper to hire a cab than to drive your own vehicle.

What is your take on the current mobile-only strategy that these big eCommerce giants are adopting?

It’s not a strategy that companies are adopting, but something that customers have chosen for themselves. Customers are more and more engaging on mobile phones, they are essentially making transactions on their mobile phones. And if customers have adopted this technology, we as businesses have to be present on that channel. And if this channel caters to 60-70 per cent of the market, then it’s worth being focused to this particular market. The cost of operations is low and this is no doubt that it is a highly scalable model.    

And to conclude, how was your experience with The Indian Retail Congress 2015?

This was, indeed, a very engaging platform. I personally got to meet a lot of people. I think the challenge with some of the online-only companies is that we don’t get to meet the offline companies and this is a brilliant forum to bridge this gap between online and offline.

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