You may now use your smartphone to hail a taxi. One of the world’s leading mobile tax apps, Easy Taxi, is now available in the Philippines following a successful launch in Malaysia.
Founded in Brazil in 2011 and now available in 41 cities across 14 countries, the application has more than 45,000 taxi drivers in its global network and nearly 1,500,000 downloads and counting.
“When Easy Taxi started in 2011, we had only one goal: To connect taxi drivers and passengers worldwide the smoothest, easiest and safest way possible,” says Mario Berta, Managing Director of Easy Taxi in South East Asia. “Because of the great economic development and the increasing smartphone penetration over the past years, introducing Easy Taxi to the Philippine market is just a logical step in our expansion strategy.”
The company behind Easy Taxi is Rocket Internet, which also operates Lazada and Zalora.
“I am personally very bullish on the Philippines; its tech savvy population will make the Philippines one of our major markets in Asia,” added Berta.
The app is free to download, for both drivers and passengers. “In other countries, we charge the drivers only to give him more passengers; here we had to adapt the model to the current market conditions. We charge the passenger an extra fee to ride of our drivers and we share the extra fee with taxi companies and taxi drivers.”
Installation and use of the application is easy, says Berta. Download and open the Easy Taxi app, available for iOS, Android and the new BlackBerry devices, confirm your pickup point and order your cab with the press of a button. In seconds you will receive confirmation of the name, photo and car model/plate of your driver, and will be able to follow the vehicle’s location in real-time as it approaches you. You can save favorite addresses, check ride history and use many more features constantly being added. Since drivers are checked for compliance before joining the network, passengers do not need to worry about their safety and can simply enjoy their ride.
“The ultimate goal is to help passengers to get a cab and increase drivers’ income. We will be heavily investing on the passenger side, making sure every ride is a great, safe and fast experience, we want our customers to feel empowered by this app,” says Berta.
