In Nigeria, one of the world’s worst nations for kidnapping, getting in the wrong cab could end up costing you or your family a lot more than the agreed taxi fare.
Many people have a “taxi guy” whom they trust to avoid this risk, but what if he is on the other side of a notoriously traffic-throttled city like Lagos just when you need him?
It was a clear gap in the market for Easy Taxi, which like Uber uses a smartphone app and GPS technology to provide taxi services by linking up customers with a trusted driver who is nearby.
In Nigeria, Easy Taxi only recruits existing taxis, but ones that are carefully vetted with all their documents in order. Many will not pass the test.
A spike in kidnapping of well-to-do Nigerians and expatriates in Lagos in late 2012 and early 2013 made a lot of people wary of flagging down unknown cabs. Nigerians dubbed them “one chance,” denoting the small, but terrifying, risk.
Consultancy Control Risks said Nigeria ranked third behind India and Mexico for recorded kidnaps-for-ransom in 2013, though last year it had been pushed down to fifth place by Iraq and Pakistan.
“People were being kidnapped in taxis, in public buses, so there was a big fear for safety,” Easy Taxi Nigeria managing director Bankole Cardoso said.
“We have a GPS tracker, so when a driver tells you ‘I’ll be there in five minutes,’ you can actually see where he is on the map,” Cardoso, 26, said.
Easy Taxi Nigeria, owned by South African mobile operator MTN, German startup incubator Rocket Internet and Swedish technology firm Millicom, uses an app to locate one of hundreds of taxis closest to the user.
Easy Taxi was founded in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, pioneering online taxi services in Latin America and the brand has now spread to 33 nations around the world.
It fits into Rocket Internet’s strategy of taking successful e-commerce startup models and launching them in regions such as Africa, Latin America, Russia and parts of Asia.
The firm launched in Nigeria in 2013 in its rambunctious commercial hub Lagos, home to 21 million people. It has since spread to the capital Abuja and gets a few hundred customers a day, Cardoso said.
Easy Taxi has also started services in two other sub-Saharan African nations, Ghana and Kenya.
It has competitors in Nigeria, notably local firm Afrocab, India’s Taxipixi and Australian startup Saytaxi.
The Easy Taxi app has proved popular with women and those traveling at night. A new service tailored for corporate clients has already signed up names such as MTN and Samsung.
Vivian Nwakah, director of a renewable energy start-up and an American of Nigerian descent, moved to Nigeria in 2013. She did not have a car and needed to find a reliable way to travel.
“The safety aspect was what was really important to me,” she said.
The firm had to give smartphones to drivers in the startup phase. Now, drivers arrive armed with phones seeking work.
Cardoso declined to comment on revenues, but said the company plans to expand into other Nigerians cities soon.
With its colorful plastic chairs, the open plan floor that Easy Taxi shares with four other young Internet companies, also incubated by Rocket Internet, has the buzz of a tech startup.
The firm has encountered the challenges that many businesses face in Nigeria, such as extortion from well-connected people who want a piece of the pie without doing any of the work.
A man with connections to the state government last May told them what they were doing was illegal under new regulations, but they could get around them if they used his platform for their app and he collected a share of the money.
They declined, after which he said Easy Taxi would be shut down. Cardoso has heard nothing since.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: The chipmaker last month raised its capital spending by 28 percent for this year to NT$32 billion from a previous estimate of NT$25 billion Contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電子) yesterday launched a new 12-inch fab, tapping into advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology to support rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) devices. Powerchip is to offer interposers, one of three parts in CoWoS packaging technology, with shipments scheduled for the second half of this year, Powerchip chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) told reporters on the sidelines of a fab inauguration ceremony in the Tongluo Science Park (銅鑼科學園區) in Miaoli County yesterday. “We are working with customers to supply CoWoS-related business, utilizing part of this new fab’s capacity,” Huang said, adding that Powerchip intended to bridge
Microsoft Corp yesterday said that it would create Thailand’s first data center region to boost cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, promising AI training to more than 100,000 people to develop tech. Bangkok is a key economic player in Southeast Asia, but it has lagged behind Indonesia and Singapore when it comes to the tech industry. Thailand has an “incredible opportunity to build a digital-first, AI-powered future,” Microsoft chairman and chief executive officer Satya Nadella said at an event in Bangkok. Data center regions are physical locations that store computing infrastructure, allowing secure and reliable access to cloud platforms. The global embrace of AI
Qualcomm Inc, the world’s biggest seller of smartphone processors, gave an upbeat forecast for sales and profit in the current period, suggesting demand for handsets is increasing after a two-year slump. Revenue in the three months ended in June will be US$8.8 billion to US$9.6 billion, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Excluding certain items, earnings will be US$2.15 to US$2.35 a share. Analysts had projected sales of US$9.08 billion and earnings of US$2.16 a share. The outlook signals that the smartphone market has begun to bounce back, tracking with Qualcomm’s forecast that demand would gradually recover this year. The San