UY Technology launches 'empty outstation taxi' service in India

To raise $3 million to expand Taxi on Mobile services to 200 cities

UY Technology Services Private Limited, a Hyderabad-based tech startup, launched Taxi on Mobile, which it claims to be the travel industry's first inter-city ‘empty outstation taxi’ service, across 71 cities in the country on Friday.

Taxi on Mobile’s empty taxi service allows a passenger to pay only for the distance travelled to an outstation and not for the distance which he/she doesn’t use. As a regular norm in the travel industry, the passenger needs to pay a two-way fare, even if he/she is using only one way.

Besides the one way travel and one way pay feature, the new empty outstation taxi service also offers in-cab services like water bottle, pre-ordered food, alcohol detection test of the driver, and an advanced security feature with negligible violation.

“It is estimated that around one million people travel daily in taxis in India. Most of them has hassles like reservations, bookings, crowding, security, waiting time, reporting time, delays, weather, hygiene and food. More over the travel time, the drop points and the money spent is hardly satisfying. Taxi on Mobile is an attempt to break up from these traditional norms,” said Yeshwanth Vepachadu, founding director of Taxi on Mobile.

UY Technology Service, co-founded by Vepachadu and Uday Jindal in March 2015, has recently pulled in a seed funding of Rs 40 lakh. During its test phase, Taxi on Mobile has served over 200,000 passengers.

The empty taxi service is currently offered both online as well as through its mobile app.

Vepachadu said the company was in talks with a couple of venture capital firms to raise $3 million (approximately Rs 19 crore) within the next six to eight months.

“We have identified over 200 cities across India, with population of more than 200,000. Our plan is to expand our services to these cities, besides increasing our inventory from the present 4,000 taxies to 50,000 by the end of June 2016,” he said, adding that the company was expecting to achieve operational break even in two years from now.