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The Smart Taxi

The Smart Taxi : India’s Premium Cab Service; ‘Travel in Style’

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There are so many companies and brands out there that businesses are forced to gain a client’s approval to provide them with their services. Since they have a wide variety of options, customers have the freedom to choose a company that best suit their needs and requirements. Gone are the days of absolute brand loyalty wherein a whole household would use one product, and one product alone. The future is about giving the clients what they need and also being courteous and polite while doing so, to improve customer experience. Delivering unique and pleasant customer experiences will help in retaining clients, and none understand this better than the new-age start-up The Smart Taxi. Here’s a look at how an ordinary middle-class man dared to dream and made his dream into a reality.

About the Founder

Dhruvam Thaker was born in Jamnagar, and shortly after his birth, his family shifted to Ahmedabad. While growing up, Dhruvam was a quiet, and an introvert boy who had a knack for mechanics and solving riddles. Being shy and apprehensive, he preferred the company of his cars and toys over other people. It was cricket that finally helped the shy Dhruvam make friends and get over his fear of interacting with people. His father is a retired government bank employee, while his mother is a housewife. He has two siblings, a brother and a sister, who have hearing and speaking disabilities.

Due to financial constraints on the home front, Dhruvam studied in a Gujarathi medium school till class 9. His interest in science led him to take up science in his 11th, and he aspired to become an engineer. The first setback he faced in life was failing his 12th-grade exams. He, therefore, used his 10th-grade results to join a diploma course in Nirma University, determined to get his life back on track.

The Smart Taxi Founder
Image Source: startupidols.com

As his love for automobiles and machines grew, so did his grades, to an extent where he came in second in his University exams. While in college, Dhruvam worked part-time jobs and did several odd jobs to make ends meet and to ease the financial strain on his family. Soon after, he got placed and joined an MNC in Bengaluru in 2008 and worked in process improvements and production engineering. In 2013, he came back to Ahemdabad and joined a job near his home. Apart from his job, Dhruvam started feeling the need to do something of his own. While this thought was always in the back of his mind, pressure from society and financial constraints prevented him from taking the leap of faith. But one day, he made his mind and quit his job without letting anyone know about it.

Founding The Smart Taxi

While working in Bengaluru, it required him to travel using taxis, and he often found taxi services to be lacking, when it came to customer experience. He realised that issues such as poor car maintenance, rude staff behaviour and late pickups plagued the taxi service industry, while he found the airline and hotel industry to be the opposite.

That is when he came up with the idea for a taxi service that provided the same hospitality extended by airlines and hotels all over the country. The idea stayed with him all the while as he moved to Ahmedabad and started his new job there. Finally, after four years of running the idea through his head, he decided to quit his job and make his idea a reality. Dhruvam chose Ahmedabad to be his company’s headquarters as he had a local advantage and knew the market there well. So, in September 2016, Dhruvam finally gave life to his long-standing idea of a luxury taxi service, and The Smart Taxi was born. He, and his brother, who is a graphic designer, quickly got to work, and created over 22 test logos, before finally choosing on their present logo.

Speeding Forward

The Smart Taxi now has a fleet of well-maintained cabs, which have all the state of the art features and installations. The taxis themselves are driven by courteous, experienced, polite and well-trained professionals. There is an elite group of people in India who don’t mind paying extra for premium service, and that is exactly what The Smart Taxi provides; exemplary service and outstanding customer experience. The Smart Taxi has several plans and offers, and rents cabs for both hourly trips and longer outstation journeys. Their cabs welcome clients with crafty speeches, play soothing music in the taxi to create a positive ambience, and even offer customers everything from water bottles to chocolates and snacks! Some of their taxis even have WiFi, cold drinks, a plethora of magazines and an Amazon Kindle to help the customer relax and enjoy their favourite book or novel.

The Smart Taxi began its journey with just one cab that Dhruvam used to drive. Since then, the company has grown and now owns a fleet of over 60 cars, including comfortable Sedans and powerful MUVs. The company has now expanded and functions in seven cities; namely, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Rajkot, Jaipur, Pune, Indore, and Bhopal, with plans to expand even further. As the company is a bootstrapped startup, they make use of online platforms, like Google and Whatsapp to run their operations. The company also has a centralized booking centre from where they delegate bookings to local taxi companies or fleet owners. At present, the booking happens only online, but Dhruvam has plans to extend this functionality to other platforms in the near future.

Dhruvam remembers how during the initial days, he ran the entire company, doing everything from driving cabs to attending calls. But throughout his struggle, he never gave up, but rather kept pushing forward hoping that things will work out eventually. And work out it did, as within two years, the company has grown in every way with two out of every three customers coming back to them and 3 out of 4 even providing them with referrals. While a long road lies ahead for Dhruvam, it is safe to say that this shy, introverted mechanical engineer will surely leave his mark in the field of taxi service!

cabify

Cabify : The Leading Exclusive Ride-Sharing Service from Spain

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How many times it has happened that you have booked a ride, and the driver has made you wait longer than the ETA, or while riding the cab, your driver has not behaved the way he should have. Though these ride-hailing companies do promise for the best and affordable rides, they are not always able to keep up to what they talk about. Cabify is a similar ride-hailing service that entirely focuses on providing the best experience to its riders and takes them really seriously. The service had started as an exclusive one for a particular group of people, but later the company also expanded its services for the cheaper rides.

Early Life and Career

Juan de Antonio was born and brought up in Spain. He completed a degree in Electronic Engineering from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. As soon he graduated, he worked for optimizing data networks. After that, he joined the BCG as a strategy consultant. To polish his business skills, Antonio started an MBA course at Stanford University.

On the completion of his MBA degree, he joined Boston Consulting Group and later, a California based motorcycles company, the Zero Motorcycles, as Business Development Director. He played a key role in raising nearly $20 million for the company. This success helped Antonio gain enough experience as well as the confidence to start his own entrepreneurial journey.

Founding Cabify

cabify founder
Image Source: portafolio.co

Antonio got the opportunity to travel to different locations because of his studies as well as different jobs. While roaming around the world, he faced a similar problem in every part of the world, hiring the taxies. Different places had different methods of hiring the taxies, and there was no fixed method to pay them. In some places, he got really cheap deals, and some places really amazed him with their high taxi fares. Also, the payment method being cash in most of the places always annoyed him.

This was the problem, he discussed with his colleagues, and his friends Adeyemi Ajao, who is also one of the founders of Tuenti, and Brendan Wallace. After talking to them, he realised that it was not only him who was facing the problem, but others were also the victims of the same issue.

Antonio started Cabify as “Executive” in 2011 and established the company’s first office in Madrid. Juan became the CEO of the company, Ajao and Wallace became his advisors. With Cabify, Antonio wanted to provide people with comfort and exclusive rides at affordable prices. The company collaborated with companies that would supply them luxury cars like Mercedes and Audi.

The Rise

Within six months of its inception, Cabify registered around 20,000 users. In its first round of funding the company raised $1.6 million, Black Vine, Belgian fund Emerge, and AngelList, being the major investors. The company used the money for its expansion and opened its offices in Mexico, Chile and Peru.

The company was started to provide high-end car-rentals, but in 2013, the company started Cabify Lite, that would provide mid-range taxi services to its users. In April 2014, Cabify hosted another round of funding led by Seaya Ventures and raised an $8 million investment. The same year, the Cabify app had been downloaded 100,000 times globally.

Rakuten, Japanese e-commerce, made a major investment in Cabify, helping the company to further expand its services and raise its revenues to $40 million in October 2015. With the Hoy No Circula program in Mexico, the company reduced its fares by 25% to provide people with affordable rides. This helped the company to generate 200% demands in the country.

The Success

In 2016, Cabify raised $120 million in another round of funding, where Rakuten alone invested $92 million in Cabify. After the funding round, the company started its expansion to Argentina, Brazil, Portugal, etc. The funding round made it value at $320 million in the same year. The company has started with 20 employees, and by 2016, 400 employees had joined the company globally.

In January 2018, with another round of funding, Cabify raised $160 million from its existing and new investors, including Rakuten Capital, TheVentureCity, Endeavor Catalyst, GAT Investments, Liil Ventures, WTI, and valued at $1.4 billion, becoming the unicorn. Today, Cabify is operating in 14 countries.

The Difference

Though the company has got a similar business model as of Uber and Didi, the company has got some features that have made it successful in very less time. The company has decided a uniform for the drivers to handle the rides professionally. Cabify charges its customers per kilometre. Unlike Uber and other companies as well, Cabify does not change its prices on the peak hours, or according to minutes and kilometres, a passenger has spent time in the vehicle. Also, as Uber makes it easy for people to earn extra money in the spare time, Cabify has made driving the main source of income for the drivers to keep the job serious enough for them, so that they can provide the best experience to the passengers.

grab

Grab : One of the Biggest Startups in South-east Asia

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“The youth of today is the future of tomorrow”, probably one of the famous quotes, you will find written almost everywhere. It is expected of the young generation to build a better tomorrow by eradicating today’s problem, be it a social, or an economical cause. The success of Grab narrates the story of a start-up based in Malaysia, which improved both the social environment of the city and made taxi booking much economical plus convenient.

The community of taxi drivers in Malaysia didn’t have a good reputation, as at times the customers were overcharged, the security of women was a big question, and the economic condition of the drivers was unsatisfactory. Anthony took the crisis of his city into a note and together, with Hooi Ling, started a business plan to launch a ride service.

Both the founders of Grab, Anthony Tan and Hooi Ling Tan graduated from Harvard Business School, and that is how they met each other. Grab was founded as GrabTaxi in June 2012, and after a couple of years, the headquarters shifted from Malaysia to Singapore. Today, Grab provides more than just a taxi service and has customers around eight countries.

Anthony Tan

Grab founders
Image Source: yourstory.com

Anthony pursued his Bachelor’s degree in economics followed by completing his MBA from Harvard Business School. Anthony belonged to a financially dominant family of Malaysia. His father ran a family an automobile business named Tan Chang Motors. After coming back from Harvard, Anthony joined his family business as head of marketing. But, after being a spectator of the degrading condition of transportation companies in Malaysia, he came up with the idea of opening his own start-up like the ones dominating in the U.S. Especially, when he found his friends and family complaining about it, he decided that he had to do something. He contacted Hooi Ling Tan, his classmate from Harvard, who chalked down a business plan.

Hooi Ling Tan

Unlike Anthony, who after Harvard joined his family business straightway, Hooi Ling had a better taste of the corporate world. Since she was a mechanical engineer graduate, she worked as an equipment engineer in Eli Lilly before going to Harvard. She was also a business analyst at McKinsey and Company and worked there for a couple of years.

After graduating from Harvard, Hooi Ling again joined McKinsey and Company as an associate and later, switched to salesforce.com as a senior director of pricing intelligence and monetization. She worked there till 2015, a couple of years even after co-founding Grab.

The Hurdles

Initially, when both Anthony and Hooi Ling stepped into the outer world and started pursuing the taxi companies, they received several rejections. The concept was new to them, and nobody was really that enthusiastic. So, they needed to approach drivers, and the common crowd, individually, to make them understand how they could be benefited. Both of them also took feedback from the citizens of Malaysia if they would like to bring a change to networking.

Finally, after several rejections, one taxi company with thirty taxis was willing to give it a shot. They even received a sum of $25,000 from Harvard Business School to start the business and the mobile app. Finally, the company was launched in 2012, and in the first couple of years, Anthony learned a lot from his mistakes and implemented better strategies.

The Flaws

In the beginning, the capital for Grab was funded by the Tan family, and it continued for quite a long time until chaos was created. After the funding round in April 2014, the company was confused about the total fundraised, which created a lot of fuss followed by some unnecessary expenditure. Things turned upside down, resulting in no salary for the drivers for one month.

Anthony realized it was high time to buckle up and manage the finance. He brought some discipline to the company by bringing some professional investors in the house and not relying fully on the Tan family.

The Right Decisions

Since Anthony focused on the betterment of social relations between a driver and the customer, especially, on the security of the women, every driver was interviewed personally. He said that though this process was time-consuming, he couldn’t compromise with it.

Today, Grab serves customers in more than 168 cities, across 8 countries. Apart from GrabTaxi, services, like GrabFood, GrabPay, GrabBike, has also been released. By 2017, the company completed one billion rides and 68 million downloads.

The company also started investing in R&D, as he is focused more on hiring smart people who can contribute more to the business than spending millions on advertising. Anthony truly is a person to admire with great passion to ameliorate the condition of our society.

Ola London

Ola Now to Run PHV Ride-hailing Service in London

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We are flooded with the ride-hailing services and Uber being the leader among them all, is giving a tough challenge to even many of the home-grown companies in various countries. Ola the India-based ride rental service provider has been also facing similar competition, ever since Uber has entered India. But to move ahead and beat the competition, Ola finally crossed borders and launched its first international ride-hailing service in Australia in January 2018.

Ola London
Image Source: mynation.com

Now the company is moving even forward and will be starting its ride-hailing service in the capital city of the UK, i.e. London. Last year, Ola started operating in South Wales, and it has now obtained the license from Transport For London (TFL) to start private hire vehicles (PHV) ride-hailing service in London. Though the validity of the license is only one year, and it is a non-carriage license.

According to the rules of the Transport Regulatory of London and the PHV licensing, the Ola drivers will need to register themselves and their vehicles with the license to run the Ola service in the city. Any vehicle that is having a seating capacity of up to eight passengers is eligible for the registration.

“London is one of the world’s most iconic cities and hosts a progressive mobility environment. We couldn’t be more excited to bring Ola to London in the time ahead! We are looking forward to building world-class mobility offerings for London, by collaborating with drivers, riders, the government and local authorities. Londoners will hear more from us closer to our launch in the city, as we get ready to serve them.” One of the Ola spokespeople said.

With more than 8 million people living in London, the scope for the service is quite high. Along with the PHV cabs, Ola also holds the license for the Black cabs, and over 10,000 drivers are already registered with Ola platform. The company has plans to collaborate with local drivers, transport services and government to bring better services to people of London and will be launching its services by the end of this year.

Since last August, the company has been expanding in various cities of the U.K and got the PHV licence for Liverpool, Birmingham and Reading in March this year.

Uber, Lyft Rewarding the Drivers with Cash Bonuses to Invest in Shares in Their Respective IPOs

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According to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, the cab-renting service Uber and Lyft are planning to allocate some cash bonuses to their drives so that they can invest in the company’s shares through the upcoming IPO of those companies.

uber-lyft
Image Source: howtogeek.com

There has been a lot of discussions about the role of a driver in a transport company and most of the times those drivers are not recognised as the full-time employees of that company. Also, under the rules of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), those companies are not allowed to grant those drives a share of the stocks, directly, in the company.

Although many times several laws have been trying to put those drivers into the full-time employee category, companies like Uber and Lyft regards the drivers as individual contractors. Now the two companies are planning to offer those drivers who have been a part of their team for a longer time with rewards, such that they would be able to buy a share of the stakes in the IPO of those companies, before shares to begin trading on public stock exchanges.

According to the reports, Lyft will be granting the drivers, who have completed 10,000 rides, with $1,000 and the driver who have completed over 20,000 rides will get $10,000. It will be the choice of the drivers if they want to keep the money or put the money towards IPO-priced shares.

On the other hand, there is no hint from Uber over the amount of reward money. Although there has been no confirmation from Lyft as well, and the money value can be changed depending upon the situation.

Uber had been talking about offering a part of the shares of the company to its drivers since 2016, and last year, in May, the Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi also announced that the company was planning to provide extra benefits and rewards to its drivers. Uber has also started free tuition fee and insurance programs for the drivers working for the company.

Noticeably, both Lyft and Uber are ready to debut on the Nasdaq for their IPOs. It is expected that Lyft between $20 billion and $25 billion in its IPO, and Uber may reach $120 billion in the IPO. Lyft and Uber will be putting hundreds of millions of dollars toward the reward program for its drivers so that they would be able to invest during their IPOs.

Zipcar : The Success Story of One of the Oldest Car-rental Services

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Zipcar has a history even before the car-renting businesses were not even that common. Built by two moms, the idea at the time was unique, and it was their passion that made it successful in just a few months.

Zipcar is an almost 2 decades old company, founded in the year 2000, by Antje Danielson, a Harvard geochemist and Robin Chase, a stay-at-home mom and an MIT business school graduate. The two ladies met each other at their children’s kindergarten, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Both were struggling financially, as Chase had left her job due to the birth of her first child and Danielson was the only working member in her family.

zipcar
Image Source: wright.edu

But as the time was passing both of them wanted to make use of their studies, and as a business graduate, Chase has expressed her desire to start a business with Danielson. Danielson was on the same track and had studied about Switzerland’s Mobility Cooperative, and shared the idea of starting a similar technology based car-rental company, in the US, with Chase. Chase also liked the idea, but it was a big project that included a huge risk. So both talked to their husbands and got the approval for the business.

Finally, in January 2000, both started their car-rental business, Zipcar. Zipcar provided the automobile reservations to its members through charging them a monthly or annual fee. Before incorporating the company, the two had already raised investments for its launch of around $75,000 in startup financing. After they launched the startup, Chase held the position of the president of Zipcar and Danielson became the vice president of the company.

The first rental car from Zipcar went onto the roads in May 2000, and in just three-four months it registered over 600 customers for the service. The company was doing well, but the two co-founders were not going along too well. In 2001, Robin Chase fired Danielson, after Chase petitioned Zipcar’s board for the ability to make hiring and firing decisions without consulting them.

The fire of the co-founder did not impact the company much, and it kept on expanding in New York City and Washington DC. Even the company was expanding, it was unable to secure more funding, and as a result, the board of the company replaced Chase as the CEO of the company with Scott Griffith. Within two years the company was able to raise $10 million in funding led by Benchmark Capital. In the same year, a new office was opened in San Francisco, following by another office in Toronto in the next year. The establishment of Toronto led to the fastest growing market in Toronto for Zipcar.

In late 2006, the company reached London, and in 2007, Zipcar opened an office in Vancouver. In the same year, in the month of October, the company had a merger with Flexcar. After the merger, the company earned over 225,000 members, double the number of the member it had in the previous year.

In June 2009, the company launched its iPhone app, with the features like honking the horn and unlocking some Zipcars. In April 2010, Zipcar acquired the London-based car-sharing club Streetcar.

In 2013, Avis Budget Group acquired Zipcar. In 2014, the company opened its offices in Houston, Dallas TX regions, Greater Toronto and Hamilton, Ontario. In the same year, the company also extended to Paris, France and Madrid, Spain. Zipcar also launched its floating car-sharing service in Brussels, Belgium, in 2016.

Zipcar offers the car rental service for over fifty different car models, even including the luxury car models like Audi and BMW. The company headquarters still remains in Boston, Massachusetts and it has raised to over 500 employees.

The reason behind the success has been that it started through word-of-mouth promotion and had invested well in the technology. The business idea was simple and was based on customer feedback. So in the past two decades, it has grown in a phenomenal way. Even it has been more than a decade for the two co-founders left the company, Zipcar had its own success story. And, the success story of Zipcar shows us that keeping things simple and targeting customer satisfaction is the key to success.