Get a Taxi Hassle Free through Grab a Taxi
Sunday, August 04, 2013
Based from experience, getting a taxi in Manila can be a stressful experience, but a new smartphone app makes finding a taxi as easy as posting a selfie picture on Instagram.
The new app, dubbed GrabTaxi, is a taxi booking application developed for iOS and Android smartphones and can be downloaded for free.
The new app allows users to hail taxis anywhere in the metro and allows the user to learn their position relative to them along with their name, plate number and even estimated fare to the user's eventual destination relative to their current location.
The idea of GrabTaxi stemmed from the taxi industry around the world and the pains it has brought to its society for both passengers and drivers. Anthony Tan, having studied in Harvard for his MBA, strongly believed in his school’s mission to create leaders who make a difference in other people’s lives, globally. He, who interestingly enough is the great grandson of an average taxi driver in Malaysia, envisioned revolutionizing the taxi industry. He was given an opportunity to do so when he joined the Harvard Business School Business Plan Contest in 2011 during his senior year, and placing second in the said contest,
was given seed money for the business.

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.
Drivers are also victims of this industry as they consistently struggle to earn a living because of idle time in waiting in line or driving around looking out for passengers. The system that they are used to is no longer efficient as it burdens them with more expenses and diminishes their hope in a better living.
GrabTaxi aims to improve taxi markets by introducing simple, cost effective mobile-‐based technology to both supply (taxi fleet and drivers) and demand (passenger) that will optimize the matching process between both. The vision is to revamp the taxi industry and to provide public transportation mobility for all by developing a sustainable solution for a very real social pain. By combining top talent and disruptive technologies and innovation, GrabTaxi wishes to create a high potential, self-‐sustainable social enterprise that will help bring Philippines to the forefront of the technological development wave.
GrabTaxi has developed an automated smartphone booking platform in 2 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 bookings 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 need for an intermediary.
Both solutions propose a more efficient means of taxi booking and dispatching because of the following main features that GrabTaxi boasts:
1. Taxi bookings are only blasted out to drivers that are in the passenger’s 3km radius, therefore allowing faster pickups.
2. 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.
3. The algorithm for whoever wins the bidding is always the closest interested driver to the passengers, again allowing faster pickups.
4. Once matched, both driver and passenger are given direct contacts to each other for better communication.
5. Passengers are able to see assigned driver’s location and important details such as name, plate number, photo, and phone number post-‐booking.
6. GrabTaxi collects all relevant data in real-‐time – a helpful tool for fleet owners and even for both drivers and passengers.
Users can download the Android version of the app here,
and the iOS version of the app here.
0 comments