Three taxi apps compete for top place in 'e-hailing' market

Taking a taxi in Bangkok is now easier even during rush hours or rainy days, thanks to applications designed and developed to help people hail a cab from their smartphone rather than having to go out to the street and wave their hands. 

Currently, there are three such the apps available in Bangkok: Easy Taxi, GrabTaxi and Uber. 

Easy Taxi’s chief operating officer, Nattapak Atichartakarn, said the company’s core business would consist of four services: the app itself, ET Corp, ET Pro and ET Pay. Currently only the Easy Taxi app and ET Pro are available, while ET Corp and ET Pay will be launched next quarter. 

The Easy Taxi mobile app is for individual accounts, while ET Corp and ET Pro are Web-based apps for corporate accounts. ET Pay is the payment platform acting as a clearing house for taxi fare payments. 

The company’s revenue comes from two streams: advertising and booking fees of Bt20 per ride. Advertisements appear on the passenger’s app, while the booking fee is charged to passengers or their corporate account. These fees are expected to be the major revenue stream. 

ET Corp and ET Pro look similar, both designed for corporate accounts. ET Corp is for large companies that have a lot of employees who commute. Instead of giving cash directly to these employees, the company can put a chunk of money in Easy Taxi’s corporate account to allow employees to hire a cab with the Easy Taxi app. 

“The benefit to companies is allowing them to track their expenses effectively. They can set budgets and monitor expenses in real time. Corporates can access our back office to get a report on all rides taken by their employees,” Nattapak said.

ET Pro is designed to allow hospitals, hotels, restaurants and conference halls to book a cab for their customers easily and conveniently. A Web-based app, it can book up to four cabs at the same time. One advantage is that it can track usage in case a passenger loses something in the taxi. 

“Our service can add value to these kinds of corporate services. Bangkok Hospital, Fashion Island Shopping Mall, and more than 50 restaurants are trying our service, while Bumrungrad International Hospital is going to try it,” Nattapak said.

Currently under ET Pro, booking fees are charged to passengers, but a monthly fee for business subscribers may be possible in the future. 

As of early last month, the Easy Taxi app had around 500,000 downloads. The company expects a million downloads within the next 12 months. It aims by the end of next year to have 40 per cent of the country’s 110,000 taxi drivers on the Easy Taxi platform.

GrabTaxi deputy general manager Vee Charanunsiri said more than 300,000 people in six countries – Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia – used the GrabTaxi app at least once a month. To date, GrabTaxi has been downloaded to more than 1.7 million mobile devices.

“In the near future we’re committed to growing within each market and expanding to more cities in each of our six markets. We also believe constant evolution and change are essential to staying ahead of the curve and providing our customers with the best possible service,” Vee said.

Already available in Bangkok, the GrabTaxi service is scheduled for official launch in Pattaya tomorrow.  

There is a booking fee of Bt25, but for now this goes to the driver.

“At this point we are still not charging, but in general, our revenue stream is to take a small flat fee for every successful ride. We don’t charge a monthly flat fee. So in this way when the driver and passenger get a ride, they win and we win,” Vee said.

In Southeast Asia there are 600 million people, 500,000 taxis and more than 7 million taxi rides as day. So being focused on providing a great service at this point is more important than diversification of revenue, he said.

“Our focus is to give awesome rides to customers and to revolutionise the taxi industry. We are a social enterprise and we look at ways to better the lives of the taxi drivers. We launched GrabCar this year, and are focused on expanding to new cities.

“Our competitors are never our major worry, as we have enough to focus on with providing the best service possible to both our drivers and passengers. We pride ourselves at being a hyper local company and we will continue to find out what the specific needs of each market are for both taxi drivers and consumers,” Vee said.

GrabTaxi says its competitive advantage is the way it works for the people and taxi drivers. It has strong support from drivers. Its key features include real-time tracking of each passenger’s journey. Passengers can share the route with their friends or family. There is also an advance-booking feature. 

“We are still the largest taxi-booking app in Southeast Asia both by volume of downloads and usage and are confident of remaining so, as long as we continue to provide our users with the services they want,” Vee said. “In fact, we have continued to see growth in downloads and usage from both taxi drivers and consumers in recent months. 

“The bottom line is that the biggest problem for GrabTaxi is not our competitors but changing fixated human behaviour – turning people from street hailing to e-hailing,” Vee said.