Yatra Taxi Anyone? Leading Travel Site Enters Crowded Taxi Aggregator Space The online travel portal partns with various taxi aggregators to offer cab services in 450 cities across the country.
By Ritu Kochar
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After eCommerce, if there's anywhere else where we see nail biting tension it's in the taxi aggregator industry. Not only did we see big players like Ola and Uber fighting it out in the open, new players are increasingly joining this industry showing the popularity and profitability of this market.
A new member has joined this team of taxi aggregators and it is the very established travel portal of India, Yatra.com. The online travel portal has partnered with various taxi aggregators to offer cab services in 450 cities across the country, through its mobile app.
"The company has built technology to simultaneously showcase the offerings of multiple cab aggregators, allowing the traveller the freedom to choose from a variety of service and price options," said Manish Amin, Yatra.com's co-founder and Chief Information Officer about the launch of this new initiative by Yatra.
Looking to provide more services to its travellers, customers will not be able to book both local and inter city transport through the app. Under the collaboration, the customers can choose from a large range of cars including hatchbacks, sedans, SUV/MUVs and vans. They can take a cab for one-way, round trip and multi-city trips, Yatra said in a release.
Going forward, Yatra will be also tying up with intra-city point-to-point aggregators, as well as self drive and car pooling options, Manish said.
Cabs will be available for booking up to 2 hours in advance. While availing hourly cab rides, customers can pay at the end of their travel, just like facilities offered by Ola and Uber. For outstation cabs, an advance payment of 25% has to be made.
The feature is only available on Android apps yet, but the iOS launch is expected to follow shortly.
With this new added feature, Yatra.com aims to get 5% of its overall business from this segment by December. With these goals it will be exciting to see the competition this will raise in the taxi hailing business and what their tactics would be to gain customer's trust after Ola and Uber who have already claimed a special place in people's smart phones.
