TaxiPixi aims to make taxis more popular in India and beyond

A new free taxi booking app is making waves in India. Available through an Android or iOS app or online, TaxiPixi is less than a year old and offers reliable point-to-point and hourly packages for booking cabs, motorcycles or autos (auto-rickshaws).

TaxiPixi's home page online

“We believe that the primary hurdle towards increasing taxi usage is the lack of reliable availability and the perceived high cost of taxis when compared to driving your own car,” said Co-founder and CEO Kajal Dubey.

According to Dubey, taxi usage can be increased in India when customers are assured of four things:

1. Availability: If there is always a cab available when a customer makes a booking

2. Timeliness: Customers should get the cab in 10 to 15 minutes

3. Reliability: A driver who accepts the booking always shows up, and shows up on time

4. Cost: The cost of using a taxi should not be 25% to 30% higher than driving your own car

“We hope to achieve these goals by making taxi booking extremely easy, increasing transparency of cab availability and providing more choices to customers as well as drivers. We believe that these will help in improving the efficiency of the taxi market in India, thereby reducing the cost of taxis for customers and increasing the profitability for cab drivers,” she said.

TaxiPixi is structured with safety in mind, Dubey added. “We add a driver to the TaxiPixi platform only after a thorough manual verification of all documents, permits and licences of the cab and driver. As an additional safety measure, we are working on technology that would enable customers to share details of their journey with their family and friends,” Dubey said.

While CabGuru also offers taxi booking in India, TaxiPixi seems to have hit the sweet spot for many. Since it was launched in May 2013, TaxiPixi has crossed 25,000 downloads on the Android platform, with 20,000+ downloads for Delhi alone. TaxiPixi launched in Hyderabad in October 2013 and has since added more than 200 drivers and more than 5,000 Android downloads from that city. There was also pent-up demand for TaxiPixi on iOS. The iOS app launched on Christmas eve 2013, and saw more than 1,000 downloads in less than 48 hours.

“We plan to extend our services to other metro cities including Bangalore, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune and Chennai,” Dubey shared. “TaxiPixi has also received interest from entrepreneurs in other countries – including the US, UK, Peru, Turkey, and Malaysia, to bring the free taxi booking app to these markets.”