Online taxi hailing company YourTaxiNow.com has announced it is the first taxi hailing that allows its customers to rate its drivers; furthermore, the service is also allowing users to bool their preferred drivers.
David Chijioke, founder of the platform said in addition to the regular mediums, users can also access the service via BBM and Whatsapp.
“The exciting part is that on the web portal, our clients can also rate our drivers and book a preferred driver directly. This is a new innovation in taxi services and we happen to be the first company in the world to bring this innovation, with this we are able to solve the problem of drivers not being reliable and trustworthy,” Chijioke told Innovation Village.
When compared with Easy Taxi and Uber, similar platforms that offer taxi hailing services, he said they are working on a foreign model.
“I will first of all commend Easy Taxi for being the first international investor bold enough to enter the market space. The entrance of Uber further established that Nigerian market is ripe enough for mobile taxi hailing.
“The above mentioned firms business models are imported model. Before I launched fully I understudied the competition and built on their weakness. I built a model that will best serve our local market.
“We don’t just connect customers to taxis closest to them. We take them through the process. From connecting them to the taxi, to helping the driver navigate to the pickup point, the driver would not have to call the customer for direction and miss his way till drop off because the customer care also serves as a support system with a strong back end control system for both the driver and the customer,” he said.
The company currently has about 260 cars in its services.
“We lunched formally on 20th October 2014. Our target this year is to be the number one taxi hailing services in Abuja and to expand fully to Port Harcourt and Lagos,” he said.
He also expressed confidence in the ability of the platform to succeed even among competitors.
“I am very confident. If I can use a borrowed taxi to build what I have built today then I have no doubt what so ever that the platform will succeed. We are committed to consistently provide our customer a taxi just a click away. The growth has been tremendous within this few months,” he said.
