According to Statista report, as of May 2018 Uber is the number one taxi hailing app valued at around 72 billion US dollars.
With such an achievement Uber has set a benchmark for all the new entrepreneurs willing to start a taxi venture. Of course, many of them are on the way to build an app like Uber to achieve the same success.
Are you one of them? If yes, then stick to this blog till the end to get more out of your taxi booking app and taxi venture.
“What do you need to start a business? Three simple things: know your product better than anyone, know your customer, and have a burning desire to succeed.” -Dave Thomas
Though Dave has a different business niche, his statement is quite worthy of all the rising entrepreneurs like you who want to start a taxi venture and decided to build an app like Uber. Uber has transformed the complete scenario of taxi industry with one powerful solution- taxi booking app development. In order to bring the same boom in the taxi industry, you will need to have a burning desire as said by Dave. Along with this, you must be well acquainted with each and every aspect of ‘Uberification’ economy and the taxi startup that you are going to establish soon.
We have found that the taxi app development solutions are really high on demand to make an app like Uber and there are number of taxi app built till the date. However, very few of these apps tend to succeed or make a good business in the market.
Recognizing this fact, we have decided to enlighten you with a proper strategy needed to establish your taxi business successfully with a booming app like Uber that will bring the same prosperity in the taxi industry that Uber has brought.
Before that let’s dive deep into the ‘Uberification’ concept:
How Uber has Launched: The Idea and History
Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp the founders of Uber once decided to bring an affordable and convenient alternative to the traditional taxi services that we all were exploiting but not contented with. Camp embraced the innovative taxi app development solutions to implement their startup idea into the reality.
In May 2010 they have launched the beta version of Uber services, following which an official mobile app was launched in 2011 in San Francisco with the name “UberCab”. Initially, the app only facilitated users to book a black luxury car at the cost of about 1.5 times that of a taxi.
After the success of their core idea, they have rapidly invented various on-demand services like UberBLACK, UberKIDS, UberPETS, UberPOOL, UberEats, UberBoats, UberWAV, UberX and so on. Currently Uber is operating in 633 cities worldwide with its websites and mobile apps.
The Marketing Strategy of Uber:
Uber completes average 15 million rides daily and there are about 75 million people using Uber for ride booking.
The numbers are quite noteworthy and you must be curious to know why Uber is gaining this much popularity. The immense success of Uber is not only the result of the excellent taxi booking app development solutions but also the powerful and intelligent marketing strategy that it has been implementing.
The founders of Uber were needed to draw the attention of both riders and drivers at the same time and thus have adopted different marketing ways such as:
- Marketing by word of mouth between the tech community
- Hosting and sponsoring tech events
- Giving free rides to the event’s participants
- Through blogs and social media
- Encouraging new riders by offering 50% on the first ride
As you are about to make an app like Uber, you must take these point into account and plan accordingly for your venture. But, these strategies may not work for your business, thus you will have to think differently even before going to build an app like Uber.
How Much Money Does Uber Make?
Uber takes a 25 % commission per ride; however, it earns an average profit of only $ 0.19 per ride. The rest income goes to taxes, interest, and equity-based compensation for its employees.
Most of the capital earned by Uber is invested in credit-card processing, anti fraud efforts, customer support, software development, and marketing.
Though Uber’s valuation is about $70 billion, the company actually does not earn that much wealth that we think.
Why You Should Build An App Like Uber: The Scope Of Taxi Booking App Development
Finding a public transportation in big cities like London is really difficult particularly in the rush hour like in the morning or evening. However on-demand taxi booking apps like Uber, Lyft, makes the life easier as we only need to login into our selected apps then can get a public transportation near us quickly. Due to such a great convenience, many inhabitants are making use of taxi booking apps and will keep using further. Thus if you are going to create an app like Uber with the trending taxi booking app development solutions then you are on a right track.
According to PwC prediction, transportation is one of the largest sharing economy sectors that will make global revenues of $335 billion by 2025.
We can say that starting a taxi venture with a taxi booking app like Uber is an absolutely wise decision and who knows, your taxi startup will have a Lions share in this global revenue of transportation industry.
But you need to be aware of the competition and taxi app market as the App stores and play stores are already flooded with myriads of taxi booking apps amongst which apps like Uber, Lyft, Taxify, Talixo, Cabify, Hailo, LeCab, are making a good business while other have failed drastically in their early stage.
How to Start A Taxi Startup With App Like Uber
Here are some key points that will help you to establish a super successful taxi startup with an app like Uber:
Selecting Your Business Niche
As we said earlier the competition is quite huge for your taxi booking app venture. But remember this:
“The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old but on building the new.”
Rather than focusing on the existing apps and their services you should focus on how to make your app all unique and outstanding. For that, you first have to decide which service you can and want to offer to the world through your app. Here are some best on-demand services that you can choose as your business niche:
Car Rental Service
Sometimes people need a private car so that they can visit at their desired place without any disturbance of driver. Car rental service app is the best solution for this. You can consider this app idea and build a car rental service app where a car owner can easily upload all the details along with the image of the car and put it on rent. Customers can find their needed vehicle and make online payment for the same.
With your app, you can choose to offer outstation car rental, corporate car rentals, local car rental, Self Drive Car Rentals, P2P Car rental Services, long-term car rental and so on. Car Rental App like TURO is the best example you can consider.
Carpool and Ride-Sharing Service
Affordable ride service is one of the big reasons behind the success of Uber. You must consider this fact and should bring a way so that customers can save money on their ride. Carpooling and ridesharing services are the trending and excellent way of providing affordable taxi services to everyone. You can build an app like Uber but will offer a carpooling or ride-sharing service to the passengers.
Select the taxi app development solutions that will help you add some effective features like calculation of sharing amount, the privacy of users sharing the ride, creating or joining travel plans etc.
Luxurious Taxi Services
Some inhabitants love to travel in luxury cars but it is not possible for all of them to invest in buying such luxury cars. Nowadays renting luxury cars is the new trend; people look for the car they desire and hire it for some particular period. This is one best service that you can offer with your app. With such an app, people can book or rent luxury cars like Mercedes or Lamborghini.
As this is somehow unique idea the competition is supposed to be quite low and thus there are high chances to succeed in this business niche.
Kids Transportation Service
Parents’ biggest concern is to find a reliable transportation means for their school going kids. You can diminish this concern by offering parents with an affordable, convenient and most importantly reliable transportation services for their kids. ‘Uber for kids’ is the great example for your inspiration.
Along with cab booking, the app also provides the driver details and the live vehicle location tracking feature for the better safety of children.
Medical & Healthcare Taxi Service
Patients mainly require a comfortable and quick means of transportation to and from the hospitals to the home. An excellent alternative is to provide an on-demand Ambulance taxi service to such patients. With such an app, patients can easily call a vehicle and also pay conveniently.
You need to create an app like Uber, purchase, or rent an appropriate vehicle, contact local physicians, doctors, and dentists to register them with your app.
Wheelchair Accessible Taxi Services
Another best alternative to above service is to offer Wheelchair Accessible Taxi services (WATS) with your app. You can build an on-demand taxi app that will provide people with disabilities with Wheelchair Accessible Taxi services (WATS).
This app will include features like special training for drivers, modification of taxis to make it wheelchair accessible, and much more.
Water Taxi Service
Just like road transportation, you can have the on-demand taxi app development solutions for the water transportation as well. You can build an app like Uber that will offer water taxi services like private or public water transportation for personal, commercial, or sightseeing use. Uber has launched such service with the name Uberboat in Croatian coast.
For this, you can choose taxi app development solutions like ship booking app development, Uber boat taxi application development, cruise booking app, etc.
Technology Stack Needed to Build an app like Uber
Before starting the taxi booking app development project you need to know the exact working and set of technologies of the Uber so that you won’t face any malfunction in future.
- Payment Gateway Integration
For offering cashless payment solution and accept card payments, Uber has partnered with Braintree, which is one of the best companies in the mobile payment market. It also makes use of PayPal’s Card.io service for credit card scanning on iOS. The app reads the numbers on a card and adds the information for you. However, for Android app, you have to enter credit card data manually. Stripe is another alternative that you can go for. It provides its payment services to Lyft and to many other popular on-demand startups like Instacart and Postmates.
- Push Notification and SMS
Uber has collaborated with Twilio telecommunications provider for its text message service. It also must have used Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) and Apple Push Notifications Service, for implementing push notifications in its Android app and iOS app respectively.
- Geolocation
For Device Location
For iOS app Uber app developers use the CoreLocation framework to trace a user’s device location. It provides protocols and classes to schedule and configure location delivery and send location events to the server.
For the Android app, they use Google’s Location APIs. This API can intelligently manage primary location technology whilst meeting different development requirements of location-based features.
For Driving Directions
In order to display point-to-point directions on a map, Uber app developers used MapKit for an iOS version of the app. And for Android, directions and routes are facilitated using the Google Maps Android API.
- Which Is The Best Way To Build An App Like Uber: Clone Or Custom?
The next biggest dilemma you might be facing is regarding the actual development process of an app like Uber. In order to create an app like Uber you have two options i.e, you can either search for the Uber clone scripts and get an Uber app clone source code or hire proficient taxi app developers who can create an app like Uber from scratch.
Though Uber clone scripts give you quick and inexpensive results but when you select Uber app clone you must have to face certain issues be it regarding its functionality, features or quality. This is because the clone script you will select may not be up to date with the latest features and functionality,
Opposite to this, when you choose to hire taxi app developers for custom taxi app development solutions they let you add all the trending and effective features as per your requirements. As a result, you get a feature pact and highly functional app having ability to sustain in the app market and give you high ROI.
- How Much Does It Cost To Develop an App Like Uber?
Here comes the most awaited question that is revolving in your mind. The cost to make an app like Uber depends on several factors and varies accordingly.
Factors affecting the cost to make an app like Uber:
- Which mode of development are you choosing Clone app or custom app development?
- Which advanced features do you want to add to the app?
- What technologies are you using?
- Who are you hiring freelancer or in-house team of developers?
- How complex will the app functionality be?
These and so many other factors will greatly affect the development cost of your app. Thus we can’t mention the exact cost of developing a taxi app like Uber. However, here we are giving our rough estimation of cost on the hourly basis and as per the development phases:
| Development Phase | iOS App | Android App | For Both Platform App |
| Backend | $5.000 | $5.000 | $10.000 |
| Development | $10.000 | $12.000 | $22.000 |
| Design/Frontend | $9.000 | $11.000 | $20.000 |
| QA / PM | $6.000 | $7.000 | $13.000 |
| Total cost (approx.) | $30.000 | $30.000 | $35.000 |
Conclusion:go high.
This was our all know-how about “Uberification” economy and we have depicted it just to enlighten you with each and every aspect of it and help you to start your own taxi business with a robust and thriving app like Uber. Besides this thorough knowledge, you also need the support of a dedicated team of taxi app developers who can create an app like Uber as per your requirements and that too with latest taxi app development solutions. Asterism Infosoft is one of the leading taxi app development companies having extensive experience of all kind of taxi app development projects and will provide you with the most rending solutions.
