Developing Taxi App like Uber- Know it's Business model & Technical Considerations

Ever since the taxi booking app Uber was launched, its popularity has been growing at a fast rate. Why is that so? Spanning across 633 countries and 78 countries, Uber has reached almost every nook and corner of the whole world. Until 2018, 50 million riders and 7 million riders have enjoyed its world-class functionalities. In fact, according to Statista, the global net revenue of Uber stands at a whopping 7.5 billion U.S. dollars.

It is not surprising why a number of online cab aggregators are relying on entrepreneurs who are starting their taxi booking app ventures. However, before developing an app like Uber, one must have a thorough understanding of the business model and technologies to launch such an app successfully. So, let us explore in detail about the workflow, revenue model and technical considerations while you develop Uber like apps.

Work Flow of Uber

Uber has been a leading taxi ordering app only because of its excellent services for the people. Not only this, but it has also created millions of job opportunities. Being a blessing in disguise for riders as well as drivers, booking a cab has become nothing but a tap on the phone. Today, mobile app development takes just a few weeks. One can build apps even with clone app scripts that can save a lot of money and time. However, what does the workflow of an app like Uber consist of?

Step 1: Requesting of taxi service

Customers open the app for requesting a ride. This includes the selection of car size under sub-categories of mini, medium or luxury.

Step 2: Notifying the driver

As soon as riders send the request, the taxi app sends notifications for all available drivers in the nearby range. When a driver accepts a rider’s request, the driver’s information is sent to the rider.

Step 3: Details of the ride

Along with viewing ETA, users can also track the entire route from the place of pickup to the destination with a mobile app.

Step 4: Payment process

When the ride gets completed, riders have to pay the amount for the trip. The taxi booking app calculates the prices as per the distance traveled and base fare.

Step 5: Rating rides and performance

According to the performance of drivers, users can provide ratings and reviews on the app. Even drivers can rate their experience with their customers.

Understanding the basic workflow of an app is important to come up with a unique and out-of-the-box taxi app solution. But, there is much more to it. What are the various business models for developing a taxi booking app like Uber?

Also Read, The smart way to develop an app like Uber

Business model for developing Uber-like app

Most of the well-known taxi booking platforms like Uber, OlaCabs, and MeruCabs are cab aggregators who partner with cab operators to provide rides on request. For such platforms, the revenue model is based on the criteria of pay-for-performance. Apart from this, such models receive a commission from the cab operators on every sale that occurs. Additionally, operators also have a fee for enjoying the facilities of the technology platform.

Some of the major types of business models are:

• Aggregator Model
• Ownership Model
• Revenue Generation Model

Aggregator Model

Under this type of business model, the customers contact the booking system providers. The booking system provider contacts the taxi operators or car owners who, in turn, assign a cab to the customers.

Ownership Model

This is the most important business model used nowadays. Customers can book a cab for their trips via a smartphone having a cab booking app. Consequently, riders can enjoy a convenient taxi service after a taxi operator or car owner contacts them.

Revenue Generation Model

For generating constant revenue after developing a taxi app, mobile app development companies can use the following methods:

• Providing Premium Car services
• Charging rides on a kilometer basis
• Surge Pricing in peak hours
• Charging for delays or changing of schedules
• Different price ranges for different car models
• Special charges for other delivery services

As per Statista, Uber has a market value of 72 billion U.S. dollars as of May 2018, while Didi Chuxing has a value of 56 billion U.S. dollars. Besides, companies like Lyft have also been valued at some 11.5 billion U.S. dollars. Also, the total gross revenue of ride-hailing companies will soon reach 285 billion U.S. dollars by 2030. These stats are enough to make any mobile app development company choose their business model wisely. Apart from this, developers must also know the technology stack used to develop an Uber-like app.

Technology stack for a taxi app like Uber

If one has to provide the best on-demand taxi booking solutions, improving the quality of existing services is a must. A perfect combination of resources, infrastructure, reliability, and technology, can ensure success in the competitive market of today. Thus, for offering this service, the Uber clone app development must integrate some specific technologies as discussed below.

Geo-location

Location technology is vital for assisting drivers with pickup locations of customers or for sharing live location with others during the ride. Some of the widely used technologies to operate this are:

• Device Location: CoreLocation framework, Google’s Location APIs
• Navigation: MapKit, Google Maps Android API

Notifications

Both Google and Apple push notifications have a variety of notifications like ‘Accept or decline ride’, ‘Ride accepted’, ‘Ride Cancelled’, ‘Ride Arriving’, ‘Surge Pricing Over’ etc. The technologies used for enabling push and SMS notifications are:

• Push Notifications: Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) and Apple Push Notifications Service
• SMS Notifications: Cloud Communication Providers like Twilio, Nexmo, Plivo, Sinch

Payment Gateways

One of the leaders in accepting card payments is Braintree. For on-demand ride-hailing companies, another popular payment gateway is Stripe which is even used by Lyft, Postmates, and Instacart. Furthermore, PayPal Card.io allows one to pay through credit cards easily for both iOS and Android platforms.

Infrastructure and Storage

Every mobile application has real-time as well as back end services incorporated with PostgreSQL and a scalable TripStore. Besides, other technologies used include:

• Distributed storage and analytics: Hadoop warehouse
• Backend Languages: Go and JAVA
• Inventory Management: Clusto
• Mapping visualizations: SVG, Canvas 2D, WebGL
• App Provisioning: Docker, Aurora
• Searching and visualizations: Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana

All in all, the transportation and tourism industry is in dire need of efficient cab booking apps. It is high time that you build your next billion dollar taxi booking app like Uber. Instead of developing from scratch and facing multiple issues, opting for building an Uber clone software will be a good solution. 

Bonus Recommendation

Appdupe is one of the pioneers in developing ready-made clone app solutions. They have teams of adept mobile app developers who are experienced enough to guide you through the entire process of development. If you are interested in developing Uber-like app, contact them right away.