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How to Build a Ride-Hailing Mobile Application like OLA or Uber?

Modern-day travel is closely dependent on the use of mobile applications. The days of waiting on the street for a cab to pass by have gone past us. Today, people preferably use a mobile app to book a cab or hire a vehicle that lets them travel around the city. Since 2015, online taxi mobile apps have been a huge success in countries around the world.

online taxi booking mobile app development company

The global marketplace for local travel and transport services has seen a stellar rise in the business of ride-sharing applications such as Uber and Lyft. These apps have become an indispensable component of our routine life. Their usage has grown so much that within three years of its inception, the globally-recognized ride-sharing app Uber has touched a business valuation of over $75 billion as of 2019-end.

In populous marketplaces like India, these online ride-hailing services and mobile apps have witnessed great potential. Besides Uber, India-based local ride-hailing mobile apps such as OLA has also delivered exceptional travel assistance to billions of users in the country.

Taxi booking apps are travel mobility solutions that make local commute affordable, hassle-free and easy. There are several ride-sharing services that have emerged among the fastest-growing startups in India. If you are aiming to build a mobile application for your ride-sharing or transport service, then you must learn about apps like OLA and Uber and how their app features have landed them immense success in India’s hyper-competitive taxi booking service industry.

Why Build An Online Cab Booking Mobile Application?

Before deep-diving into the process of online taxi booking mobile application development, let’s understand why there is a growing demand for making such apps. And, the best way to learn this would be analyzing India’s biggest cab service company –  Ola. Founded in 2010, OLA started its online ride-sharing business in Bangalore and was operated as a startup by Ankit Bhatia and Bhavish Agarwal.

The company started out as an auto service in Bangalore, and soon protracted into Pune, Chennai, Delhi,  Mumbai, and other cities. OLA is currently operating in major cities such as Indore, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Mysore, and Chandigarh, among others. The company primarily runs its business from the Ola mobile app, which enables travellers to book a cab. The app also allows the owners of cabs or cars to partner with OLA and share their vehicles to ferry local travellers. Currently, the OLA taxi booking mobile app has spanned over half a million vehicles across over a hundred cities in the country.

The OLA mobile app is mainly using the GPS technology for tracking user and cab locations, calculating the distance between pick-up points and destinations, and for suggesting the best routes. The company offers various types of cabs, based on user preferences. A user can select an ergonomic cab and travel affordably. A user can also select from luxury cars for special travel plans.

OLA generates the majority of its revenues solely from the app, through cash or cash-free payments and digital wallets.

Here’s a quick look at key OLA statistics:

  • Helps over 150 million customers around the world
  • Nearly 6 million users in India use the OLA app daily
  • Close to one million drivers in India work for OLA
  • Completes over a billion rides every year, which is around 5 million rides a day
  • Nearly half a million cabs in India have tied up with the OLA platform
  • Every day, 1500 new cabs join the OLA platform
  • Average distance travelled per day (considering all OLA vehicles) – 43 million km
  • Nearly 8,000 employees run the OLA business
  • Ranked as one of the top ten most-used apps on Android and iOS phones in India

These business statistics speak volumes of the success a mobile application can bring to a ride-hailing service. Inspired by the OLA story, your transport service can also touch great milestones with an online car booking mobile application. Here’s how to make an app like OLA or Uber.

 

Building an Online Taxi Booking Mobile Application

While creating an app for a taxi or cab service, there are several features to be developed. Primarily, the development of an online taxi booking mobile app can be categorized into three phases, namely:

  • Passenger app
  • Driver app
  • Admin portal

Passenger App

To develop a passenger-centric version of the taxi app, you need to start with the signup feature. It involves the basic process of signing up with the mobile app before using it. The developers should make this feature simple, user-friendly, and obligatory for the first instance of creating a user account with the taxi service. In the signup process, only limited information must be collected through data fields for name, mobile number, email address, and login password. The app should also allow auto-sign up via email user accounts or social media accounts.

Location intelligence features are also important for such apps. It involves

  • determining the pick-up/drop-off locations
  • saving favorite or revisited locations
  • Using Google Maps Platform and GPS technologies
  • support GPS-enabled location tracking

After location-specific features, the app needs booking features. Besides the normal booking process, these features should allow options such as full-day booking, advance booking, and trip booking. The app should help you schedule rides in advance and as per convenience and preferences in terms of place, date, and time. These booking features run the user requests and alert the nearby drivers for acting on it.

The arrival time is also a key aspect of the booking process. The application must show the current location of the cab and its expected time of arrival, which is really helpful for customers. The application should also allow flexible booking, where the customers can choose a suitable time of their ride. The app must send a confirmation after booking a ride. This includes sharing detailed information of the estimated ride cost, available discount coupons and payment options, and information about the vehicle and the driver.

At the destination, the app screen must display the total cost, the distance travelled, and the feedback options. It is important and compulsory for every user to give a star rating for the ride and the driver, helping the taxi service with customer satisfaction assessment.

There are several emergency instances happening during a trip. Hence, the app must have a security feature where users can add emergency contact details and get quick access to emergency services during every ride. The app should also integrate multiple payment gateways to diversify and simplify modes of payment. Users who do not wish to pay in cash must be able to use digital wallets via the app.

Also read: Quintessential Features for Travel Planner App Development

Driver App

In the second phase, the app needs to be made with a focus on cab drivers. The app should allow drivers with location sharing through Google Maps Platform. It will enable them to find the nearest pick-ups on their route. The app must maintain all the records of completed and canceled rides so that the drivers can analyze their own work.

As users, the drivers should also be able to add an emergency contact to the app, which will send the location and ride details to their contact persons in the event of accidents and other travel mishaps. The app must have a review feature, which is of utmost importance for drivers. They can share feedback on passengers, particularly when they come across people with suspicious, offensive or bizarre behaviors.  This feature can create a blacklist of passengers which will serve the taxi service better in terms of booking rejections.

Admin Portal

In the last phase of mobile app development, the app needs to set up a dashboard or portal from where the administrator (the taxi service company) can monitor and control the operations. A manual admin control can allow the service to manually assign or cancel a trip if the driver or rider is unable to operate via their respective smartphones. Similarly, the service can get details on transactions, daily trips, revenues and commission earnings, rewards, and discounts.

Customizing driver commissions is also a must-have admin feature for the app. Different commission rates can be applied for various drivers, based on their ride ratings. The admin can easily change these rates anytime, depending on the underperformance or outperformance of the drivers.

Admins would be needing a user dashboard for tracking completed rides, pending rides, cancel rides, and ongoing rides. The app can have some simple pricing management features so that the admin can set ride pricing based on areas, time of the day, and traffic. The app also needs a report generation feature, which will enable the admin to create weekly, monthly or yearly reports and summarize the earnings of every individual driver.

Taxi Booking Mobile App: Design and Technology Stack

To build an effective peer-to-peer ridesharing mobile application, the development should be dynamic and technically sound. A comprehensive suite of technologies can help achieve this development, based on your specific business requirements.

  • Location intelligence: Google Maps Platform, Geo-location APIs
  • Data management: MySQL, Apache Hadoop, Google Cloud APIs
  • Web development: HTML5, ReactJS, AngularJS
  • UI/UX: JavaScript, Bootstrap
  • Push notifications: Google Cloud Platform and Apple Push Notifications
  • Cloud communication: Sinch, Nexmo, Twilio
  • Payment gateway integrations: Google Pay, PayTM, PayPal, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, etc

You can choose to develop an online taxi booking mobile application with Android app development since most of these technologies are smoothly compatible with the platform. You can also go for iOS app development of your online cab booking app, however, it may entail a slightly extensive and costlier technology stack.

Ready to Build Ride-Sharing App?

To build a great ride service hailing mobile application such as OLA, you need to partner with the best mobile app developer. Sankalp Computers and Systems – India’s top mobile app development company – can be your partner in taking all the strategic considerations, analyzing the market insights, and executing an innovative mindset for ride-sharing mobile app development.

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