A STUDY OF TAXI AGGREGATORS IN INDIA: OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES

Abstract

This study aims gain an in-depth understanding of cab aggregators market in India. Identify the core problems faced by these aggregators in inter-city taxi market and how can they tackle these issues. Cab aggregator sector is in the driver’s seat and has become a leading business with professional services. Before these companies, travellers had to depend on unorganized taxi or auto rickshaw drivers once they got out of the airport, railway station, or bus stations or for that matter anywhere. Now the app on the smartphone can help them book a real cab and travel without any hassles of entering into a spat with taxi drivers or auto rickshaw drivers when they move or need to hire for travel within a city. With GPS enabled services and apps installed in the mobile phone, these services have become very popular in the towns and customer is getting hassle free journey. Particularly in metro cities of India like Delhi or Mumbai where travel distances are getting longer. In the absence of a good quality public transport system in India, Taxi plays an important role as transportation options in India. According to Road Transport Yearbook, there are 2.3 million registered taxis operating across different states in India. This number includes all types of cabs. There are nearly 500,000 -600,000 cabs offering taxi services in organized sector. It is estimated that total market size is more than $9 billion and merely 6-7% is organized. Taxi market has witnessed a great growth in last 3-4 years and is currently growing at 15-20% per year. Taxi aggregator startups also known as Cab Service Providers in India was a business idea on boom around 3 years ago. People witnessed over 15 start-ups providing cab services in India.Some of them succeeded in their business and some of them had to close their businesses.