The Indian radio taxi marketplace is presently worth $6-$nine Bn and it’s a widely recognized reality that taxi offerings have disrupted the intra-town shipping device and feature emerged as one of the excellent option for humans to move. Not most effective it has demonstrated excessive at the utilitarian front, but also has helped tourists keep cash in comparison to actual ownership of a personal automobile.
At a time whilst most startups are looking to observe the Uber for X mode of business, Mayank Gureja’s EK is trying to unite those offerings as a substitute. The app went stay in India and in beta in The USA and UK, in July this year and is available on both Android and iOS systems.
The motive behind EK seemed to be the reality that on-call for economy is inducing a paradigm shift in the market and this represents the thrashing heart of cities and economic system. The new offerings are not best revolutionising the sector but they may be also flourishing a new international of digitisation.
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It brings in cab offerings including Uber, Ola, TaxiForSure and Meru at the identical platform and let person examine the services and pick out the maximum affordable one with out leaving the application. It appears that EK is presently no longer specializing in generating revenues as they need to win user consider by using supplying a transparent seek result supporting them choose the pleasant alternative. Mayank assured customers and stated that at any juncture, customers will get the first-rate alternative and not the pleasant alternative someone paid for.
“Since sustainability of cab hailing service may be the spine of EK, we had a rather constructive method in the direction of the Ola/Uber model and seeing that we follow surge pricing we are able to grow to be developing an economy of scale,” said Mayank.
Here is a video to recognise more about Ek
Current Traction, Market Opportunity and Plans Ahead
There are around 10 global cab services on board which incorporates Sidecar, Hailo, TaxiBeat, Bi Taxi and more. As referred to on the web site, the crew is likewise planning to herald more offerings including Easy Taxi, Curb, 99Taxis, and many others. The group claims to get 6X M-o-M new user growth together with sixty seven% re-engagement. There are plans to add different capabilities inclusive of accepted experience later option, smart watch app, global expansion to countries consisting of Brazil, China, and many others.
If we cross by means of numbers, than on a per day foundation, Uber receives approximately 1 Mn rides, Ola receives 200K rides even as Lyft gets 80K rides. Ek attempts to capitalize on the truth that even now the Indian shipping space is held together loosely and finally biggies like Ola and Uber will turn out to be winners, however down inside the destiny things are set to exchange. With government regulations making it less difficult for new gamers to enter the marketplace, it is more of putting in place a fairplay platform for all of the players on the way to subsequently bring about the best participant triumphing the game and inadvertently avoids monopoly.
When requested approximately the potentialities of Indian cab hailing industry in the upcoming years, Mayank stated that they foresee the unorganised quarter turning into networked into a free conglomeration of on-call for packages. “Most of these businesses will come to be with Uber or Ola, but there is definitely room in the marketplace for an impartial on-call for infrastructure provider to carry these cabs online,” he delivered.
Competition and Challenges
Intracity transport in India has been converting, thanks to the spike in the population and quantity of automobiles. Defining it in terms of infrastructure design, Mayank said that traffic expands to fill the roads designed to house it. There is a correlation among building large highways, roads, and flyovers and the amount of automobile possession. This creates a unfavorable cycle which cities can by no means win – main to congestion and an unsustainable quantity of investment within bigger and larger infrastructure. Enrique Penalosa, the mayor of Bogota, Columbia, had an eloquent manner to mention this, “A evolved country isn't a place where the terrible have motors, it’s in which the wealthy use public transportation.”
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Ek is not the most effective cab aggregator out their, Scoot is any other such app which guarantees to bring all the cab hailing offerings in a unmarried app. In April this year, Ixigo also came up with similar app, protecting all fundamental cab companies in a hundred+ towns. Launched for Android first, it has got over 20,000 downloads from eighty+ cities already.
EK desires to constantly evolve and make certain that it's far usually impartial with regards to concept of cab operators. In all chance, Ek might hit a bottleneck with Cab operators like Uber who are normally cautious of such attempts as it may divert the enterprise to competition. At the same time, the app may additionally face a massive setback in case the operators restrict access to their APIs hence destroying the middle of the commercial enterprise.
Editors Take
We right away favored the app when you consider that we don’t should shuffle between a handful of Cab hailing apps to find out the proper ride for me. Once EK comes up with upload on features like scheduled cab hailing offerings it will upload to the particular proposition of the App and make it an indispensable tool. The best a part of the software is that it's going to make sure a degree playing ground for any new entrants and this can immensely assist new cab hailing corporations. Its equally right to see that EK is taking a Global stance at the shipping problem and isn't always proscribing itself to the Indian context. However, with the space getting crowded, rate wars have all started and has resulted into extra promotional capabilities and technology updates. It would be really worth looking how the startups in this area tackle so much of warmth.