GrabTaxi Application, The Philippine Taxi Industry Solution

by Kenji on 6:18 PM in Android Application, application, GrabTaxi Application, iOS application, Online, Solution, Taxi Solution, The Philippine Taxi Industry Solution

Online apps has been the craze of this generation. There are application or widgets that helps us in our daily lives. Some are to entertain, some are for personal use or reminder and some are there to help.

End of July an application online was launched here in the Philippines and the main purpose of the application is to help commuters locally get to their destination at the most fastest and convenient time. The fastest way was using the taxi and getting one during rush hour makes it really hard.

The name of the application was “GrabTaxi”. Just remember the green balloon icon with a fast taxi inside the balloon. This GrabTaxi is a subsidiary of MyTeksi, the first in ASEAN to use smartphone to smartphone cloud-based technologies for taxi booking and dispatch and one of the fastest growing social start-up companies.

The society constatly faces the many challenges that the local taxi industry has caused. Passengers face the same difficulties in getting a decent taxi driver especially dring rush hour, as I have writtten earlier. The Philippine taxi industry is not as solid as the other countries. There are different owners and operators roaming around the metro that makes it really hard for the passengers. They even get confused as to which taxi operator to rely on and which phone number to call for taxi bookings, and therefore solidifying the lack of trust that is already prominent.

GrabTaxi is created to improve taxi markets by introducing simple, cost effective mobile-based technology to both the supply which is the taxi fleet and the drivers, and the demand which are the passengers that will optimize the matching process between both. Making things a lot more easier. The vision is to revamp the taxi industry and to provide public transportation mobility for all by developing a sustable solution for a very real social pain. By combining top talent and disruptive technologies and innovation, GrabTaxi wishes to create a hight potential self-sustainable social enterprise that will help bring Philippines to the forefront of the technological development wave.

So how does the apps work? GrabTaxi developed an automated smartphone booking platform which comes in two solutions:

For fleets that have existing call bookings, a smartphone will replace the driver's existing CB radio as his primary dispatch conduit. GrabTaxi will then provide the fleet an operator system where its current taxi call bookigns will be inputted then blasted to only the available drivers closest to those specific booking requests.

For fleets without call bookings, drivers will also use smartphones as their dispatch tool. GrabTaxi will then market smartphone apps across the major platforms (i.e. iPhone & Android) that will enable passengers to directly book taxis around him with no ned for an intermediary.

Both solutions propose a more efficient menas of taxi booking and dsipatching because of the following main features that GrabTaxi boasts:

Taxi bookings are only blasted out to drivers that are in the passenger's 3km radius, therefore allowing faster pickups.
The taxi booking job is flashed to the driver's phone with important information such as pick up point, drop off point, and even additional tips from the passenger. He has the option to bid for the job with just a touch of a button.
The algorithm for whoevern wins the bidding is always the closest interested driver to the passengers, again allowing faster pickups.
Once matched, both driver and passenger are given direct contacts to each other for better communication.
Passengers are able to see assigned driver's location and important details such as name, plate number, photo, and phone number post-booking.

Here's a better look of the app in colors.