Text and Ride in India

Are taxis as fast as rickshaws, even in heavy traffic?

I know in Bangkok, its a lot of tourists that ride the Tuk Tuks, maybe its the same thing in rickshaws?

My father is a cab driver and your Math is way off course. In order to break even, Cab drivers and most travel agencies offering cab services use a mix of fare systems. If you are hiring a cab for a day, the cab fares are mixture of 'time' and 'distance'. For example, there is a minimum half day charge for 4 hours or 40 kilometer, or multiples of that plus any additional billing for extra kilometers driven.

Tourist cabs are charged separately.

Autos are far far cheaper than any cab you can hire. But the margin of profit in Autos is way less, so the general quality suffers.

The reason your Meru's, Ola's or even Uber can offer cabs for so cheap is they raise enough money to operate on losses. Bankruptcy is pretty common in this business. Every time I talk to my father about a new cheap travel scheme, he only asks me to wait for their imminent demise.

We've been in this business for quite some while to understand how this stuff works. If you wish to understand how sustainable cab business work, have a talk with the office cab drivers. You will get a peek into the life of people who sleep for barely 5 hrs/day and drive 300Km/day to make a living on 12000 rupees a month. All while charging a good deal to travel agencies.

Autos are going to make a killing. If you are thinking you are going to invest your way in to this market, then you are going to be in for a surprise.

There is a saying in my native tongue(urdu): "If you wish to destroy a person's life, get him to start a travel business'.

I've noticed a few things that seem to differentiate autos and taxis. Perhaps I'm overestimating their importance, and these are definitely just anecdotes and not data, but these might be worth considering:

- Relationships. Almost everyone I know who has stayed in one city/area for more than 4-5 years has the phone numbers of a few auto drivers they trust. These are the first who are likely to get a call when they have time and need to make a quick trip to a friends house or the grocery store. OTOH, while The same goes for cabs, they tend to have the numbers of a local cab company, not the driver. The cab company gets a call only for longer trips; typically the ones that lead out of town.

- Trust. Ties in with above, people are wary of unknown auto/cab drivers. I know a lot of people >40 tend to prefer calling someone they know rather than flagging down an unknown auto/cab, more so late at night.

- Roads and weather. I know a few places where driving in a car is almost impossible. The roads are just too narrow to allow it. Perhaps not a large market for cabs but one heavily trafficked by autos.

- Regional culture variations. Bangaloreans in my circles tend to prefer autos, while Mumbaikars prefer cabs. Delhi folks almost always prefer to drive.

My point being I'd love to see companies like this adapt to these variations. I'd personally prefer to call an auto guy I know who works with this service, and then fall back to someone else if he's busy. Or bump me to a cab company if the distance is too far. Perhaps give my family a way to track me on pickup and drop if I'm heading in to the shadier parts of town.

I think they will coexist.

It's a signal, that they are not doing manual labor.

Sign of wealth/prestige in some places, means you don't do hard labor with your hands. (Someone please correct me if there's a more subtle meaning.)

It could just be a fashion statement as well

A difference here is that rickshaws tend to be independently operated, somewhat differently from the incumbent taxi services worldwide that have dispatch agencies, who are directly hurt by Uber-likes routing traffic directly to the drivers rather than through the agencies.

Here, originally the only operands were customer and driver, and now Autowale, while increasing the number of operations happening, making pretty much everyone happier. Of course, there are a few rickshaw agencies, or bigwigs with subordinate drivers, who play the role of the taxi agency, and probably get angered by this, but I don't think they're unified/large enough to pose a notable threat.

So I would foresee startup-growth/business-model issues being the more relevant causes for a shutdown of Autowale, contrary to with car/taxi startups.

>>public-transport culture problem

That's just one thing. Operating a fleet of vehicles comes with its own head aches. Start with deprecating assets, poorly maintained vehicles, and thin profit margins. Doing this on scale gets very difficult.

Plus from everything I've heard. Getting parking slots, permission, permits etc requires paying out heavy bribes[Which you can't legally account for] etc etc.

Together all of this really makes it difficult to run this business on scale.

Shanky, not the kind of experience you'd have known Ola for. There could have been some cases of a few inconsistent experience coming your way (surely a function of scale), but that is minimized to a very large extent with aggressive sourcing of feedback, audits and quality checks. As such, Ola doesn't face such issues since it's focus is towards creating micro-entrepreneurship opportunities for drivers (who own their cars) and work with Ola purely on a commission basis, but in adherence to strict quality measures.

On a side note. if you have had a bad experience(s), do share up your CRN on feedback@olacabs.com. The team is generally quick to resolve.