In the last few years, radio cabs have become very popular and widespread across India. There were pioneers who started with this service and now there are so many service providers that you fail to count them at the tip of your fingers.
With business executives and intercity travelers across various parts of the country increasing, it's always difficult to get a radio cab to a destination of your choice available immediately. Also it's a pain to keep a track of the different service providers and their phone numbers despite them being pnemonic friendly. That's where this startup from Bangalore comes into picture. Whether a car rental or a radio taxi or anything else related to a taxi, they hope to be there to provide you with the booking options.
As you'll read on their Web site it all started with the typical "in-a-bar", "on-the-napkin" evening. "We actually kept discussing on whether to become a meta-search engine and one thought led to another and voila, we stumbled across the idea to be an aggregator for the radio taxi industry in India," said Aprameya Radhakrishna and Raghunandan G., the co-founders of the company.
Launched in June 2011 they have certainly come a long way in the last two years.
ZDNet: What problem does your startup address?
TaxiForSure: "TaxiForSure is an aggregator of taxis in India, presently in Delhi and Bangalore. Our mobile app enables booking of a taxi with just two taps. We help customers hail the nearest taxi to their pick up location at the required time. On the other hand, our driver application helps drivers earn more and reduces unhired mileage and time."
Any competitors in the market? What makes your product stand out?
We are a technology platform and enables all operators [branded and local] to manage their fleet of cars. We have an app which helps customers book taxis with just two taps. There are no aggregators in the market who are aggregating both branded and local taxi operators under an umbrella.
Who is your target audience? Who would end up using Taxiforsure more often?
Corporate office goers, frequent fliers, travellers, pub hoppers. We do around 2,000 bookings per day across Bangalore and Delhi.
Can you share details about your funding and your future plans towards growth?
We are funded by Accel Partners, Helion Ventures and Blume Ventures. So far there has been US$4 million invested in the company. We are looking to be in 15 cities by 2015.
Tell us a little about your team and yourself.
We have an extremely open and transparent culture. We started off as a two-man team and today are a strong team of 240 people spread across Delhi and Bangalore.
The co-founders Aprameya and Raghunandan are reachable on Twitter.