Taxi booking through the mobile app is not a new thing to experience in the presence of top ride-sharing companies like Uber and Lyft. These are the most successful companies letting people book the cab from the app in a very hassle-free way. These ride-sharing and taxi-hailing companies are holding the majority of users making the market value of Uber and Lyft $120 billion and $23 billion respectively. But still, they fail to dominate the market of a few countries where the government doesn’t allow any public car for ride-hailing. Thanks to this government rule, a legacy which began with the rise of Uber and Lyft is now ready to change. Now, a newer term taxi-hailing app comes in the market with the launch of the taxi-hailing app in the Tokyo city of Japan.

According to Techcrunch news, Sony enters with the taxi-hailing app in the market of Japan to dominate Japan Taxi and Uber. Sony named it S.Ride. S.Ride has made a claim that they have covered 10000 government approved taxis in Tokyo, Japan. This taxi-hailing service is using artificial intelligence to manage taxi dispatches and dynamic pricing based on weather, traffic, and local events.

Different between ride-sharing companies and taxi-hailing companies

There is only one major difference between ride-sharing and taxi hailing. Ride-sharing companies allow anyone to use his own car for the public cab service. Though these companies perform various checks and verification of the cars and drivers, they are still not as reliable as government approved taxis. Due to lack of reliability, many governments don’t allow civilian vehicles for the cab services. While taxi hailing companies are those companies who become partners with government approved taxi drivers and offer cab services in those taxis only. But a point worth mentioning here is, only a few countries have such rules. For those countries in which such rules don’t exist, it is safe to say that ride-sharing and taxi-hailing both are the same services.

Even though, it is recommended to know the government policy of your desired operational area before actually going for taxi app development.

Few Jaw dropping market figures of the ride-sharing or taxi-hailing services.

The popularity of taxi-hailing or ride-sharing service is increasing at the speed of light. Factors like more mobile devices, urbanization and easy way of transportation are helping ride sharing or taxi hailing companies to reach beyond the expectation. Following graph clearly depicts that in 2019, almost 453 million people use ride sharing worldwide. This number will reach 539 million by the end of 2021.

Apart from this, according to Similar web data, Uber ranks 38th in all categories and ranks number one in the category of maps and navigation in the PlayStore.

If you are wondering which are the some of the biggest markets of the ride-sharing or taxi hailing services, then it is not a surprising fact that China is the biggest market, following the USA and UK. Ride-sharing or taxi hailing companies are generating a whopping $29749 million of revenue from the Chinese market. Meanwhile, they are generating $17191 million and $2244 million from the market of USA and UK respectively.

Now, let’s check out a few far-reaching features of a taxi-hailing app before getting into actual taxi app development.

4 Far-reaching features of taxi app you have to consider while going for taxi app development

Simple UI

This is the first and very important thing you need to consider when you think about taxi app development. You, as an owner of the app, has to understand one fact that you are just another choice of users. If they feel irritation while using your app, they will start using some other app. So to earn the loyalty of the users, you have to make sure that you put their preference ahead and develop an app which is easy to use and smooth to navigate.

Here is the checklist before designing the UI of the taxi app.

• Make sure that your users are asked to add their personal details only for once. Use that personal details automatically whenever it is needed, in the future.
• Add the precise GPS locating technology to make sure driver and rider meet at the exact location.
• Allow user to add stoppages in between his A to B journey.
• Driver’s profile must be content-rich and the user can see all details of drivers, including most recent trips and other rider’s comment.
• Add more than one method to pay the bill. Also, let the user save his cards for quick checkout.
• Add some safety features like the ability to share ongoing ride with friends and family, and an easy way to connect with emergency services through the app itself.
• If possible, while ride booking, let riders choose the driver from all available drivers. This feature can create turbulence in the whole industry. We, the team of Coruscate Solutions can implement it into your app to make it most favourable ride sharing or taxi-hailing app in the market.

AI integration

AI is one of the best inventions of the 21st century. With AI, you can achieve 30% more productivity. Particularly in ride sharing or taxi-hailing app, AI can help you to decide the dynamic fare pricing which is the core part of the business model. AI uses some of the industry defined algorithms and previous data to predict the prices which have high relativity with the factors affecting dynamic pricing. Apart from this, AI understands the user behaviors and helps you to deploy future business policies and decisions.

Ride scheduling

This seems tiny but very useful feature in the ride-sharing or taxi-hailing app. When a user has a plan for a journey, he, of course, doesn’t have to wait till the last moment to book the ride. By scheduling ride for the future use, a user is not only saving his time but he is saving driver’s time too.

Push notification

This is the most ignored feature of the apps. For the sake of more business, most of the app owners send a lot many irrelevant notifications to the users and since it is irrelevant, users get annoyed and uninstall the app. According to research, 71% of the users uninstall the app because of annoying notification. So, it is advisable to add a feature in your app which asks user’s permission for the notification. More efficient idea is to use AI to know user’s behavior and send personalized notifications.

Studying the market and performing taxi app development is the only halfway you have reached. The business model for your taxi service is as important as fuel in vehicles. Let’s learn what type of business model big companies are following.

Business model top ride-sharing companies are following

Big ride-sharing companies like Uber and Lyft are relying on three main attributes of their business model to generate big revenue.

Partnership Model

You are a service oriented company. You are providing a platform for booking cab rides. You don’t have to care about the cabs. Cabs belong to individual drivers who register themselves to be visible on your platform. They are responsible for fuel charges and car’s maintenance. They are partners of your business, not the users of your business. Thus, you don’t have to spend resources on maintaining a fleet. By doing this, you can save a lot of money. This is the revolutionary business model all ride sharing or taxi hailing companies are following.

Dynamic Pricing

Dynamic pricing is a major source of revenue. Concept of dynamic pricing is simple. When demand increases, fare prices also increase. All ride sharing or taxi hailing companies are following this model. They make changes in the pricing during rains, pick hours and events. As we have discussed, you can use AI to set the exact pricing which matches the exact demand.

Advertisement

This is the most common yet most popular way of earning money. You can sell your online space to other service provider companies for the advertisement purpose. They post an ad on your app and in return, you will get money.

After knowing all factors related to taxi app and taxi app development, if you are triggered to develop your own taxi app, our team of Coruscate solutions is clever enough to perform taxi app development in lesser time thanks to our rapid agile development techniques. Connect with us today and share your requirements with our business team. After analyzing your requirements, we will plan and design the app. Our team will code front and back end altogether and after testing, we will deliver one of the best taxi booking apps for you. We don’t believe in APIs, made by someone else. So, we develop an app from scratch which has always more innovative features than your nearest competitors.