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Uber is one great example to showcase the success of an on-demand business model that broke the traditional business models of taxi services. This can be true for any business despite its type or industry. The millennials now demand more for on-demand solutions for most of their problems and requirements. Therefore, the demand for on-demand businesses is very high in the market right now. So, here is a brief about how to build a taxi booking app like Uber.
The Business Model of Uber
How is Uber App built? It started as an iOS app which lets its user book rides for themselves. With time, they launched a luxury cab service called Uber black that allowed the user to pick cabs as per their preference from the wide range of luxury cars. To serve all the sections of society, they came up with UberX that charges with the right amount. With the success of that, Uber enhanced its user experience with UberPool that lets the customers share their trip. With all that, you can expect the UberCopter any time soon.
Taxi business is a very competitive market which requires a high-end mobile application to capture the users. Uber’s global market values around $72 billion. Along with its close competitors Ola and Lyft, the taxi booking app industry got its 40% of the market share in 2017. The same market is expected to grow about 9.22% by 2020 and beyond from the report given by Statista.
How to Build a Taxi Booking App like Uber?
Step 1. Find a unique value to your taxi booking app business that sets you apart from the competition.
Step 2. Do in-depth research about the market and conduct a technical Audit for further improvements.
Step 3. Create a detailed technical specification or documentation for the architecture and tech stack of taxi booking app.
Step 4. Develop your taxi booking app and test it
Step 5. Deploy your app to the live environment and check if it runs efficiently in all devices.
Must-Have Taxi App Features
A taxi booking app like Uber provides its users with multiple features and keep on improving their user experience day by day. Uber is not a single application but requires 3 different application models. Those are Passenger Application, Driver Application and Admin Dashboard and Analytics. It is always a wise choice to build an MVP initially and then add more add-on features to the application on the success of the MVP. Here is the list of major features required for all the three application models.
Passenger Application
Registration
This feature is to let the user register his account or sign up with the booking app. This creates a unique customer ID to manage his bookings. Mostly, the registration is done simply with an email ID/ phone number and a password.
Pickup and drop Geolocation
The application must be able to locate the user’s place on the map using the mobile’s GPS. So that it can let the user choose a pickup location, drop location and also track the navigation of the cab on the way to the destination.
Fare calculator
It is one of the important features that approximately (Uber calculates accurately) calculates the cost estimation to hail from the pick-up place to the drop point. Uber shows the fare for all types of cabs available. But for an MVP, you do not need to calculate for every type of Cab.
Taxi Booking and Cancelling
This is the main feature of the MVP that connects the rider and the cab driver. When a rider searches for a cab, it alerts all the nearby cab drivers and waits for the nearest driver to confirm the order. Once the driver confirms, it displays the driver’s details to the user to allow them to interact. This also lets the user cancel the ride (both driver or rider can cancel a ride) if they are not interested.
Payments
Along with the Cash On Hand payment method, it is often better to provide your customers to pay online via different payment modes. Some of the common payment gateways are Paypal, Creditcards, and others.
Push notifications
The push notifications let you offer different discounts and coupons to your users with the help of this feature.
Rating
It lets the user rate the driver and write a review or even a complaint about the driver. With this user-generated content, you can further enhance the user experience of your application.
Additional Features
Once you live your MVP, and your MVP is successful in the market. You can optimally add on new additional features to enhance user experience. Some of the interesting features that can enhance User Experience are listed below.
- Book Now Ride Later
- Smart wallets
- Panic Button
- Split charges
- Favourite destinations
- Multiple modes of Payments
- Vehicle selection
- Voice recognition
Driver’s Application
Register
Similar to the user app, the driver app will also need a registration feature that lets the driver sign up with the application and move on with the further procedure.
Status
This feature lets the cab driver update their status if they are available to take or reject the ride, arrive at the pickup location and complete a trip.
Order alert
The order alert as you can learn from the name, it alerts the driver when a ride is available. It will give the driver about 15 seconds to accept or reject the booking requests. The driver will be given details like the pick-up and drop location and the distance between the two.
Estimation
Some taxi booking applications display the cost estimation to the cab drivers while others don’t.
Navigation
This feature shows the cab driver the map to the destination. This allows the driver and the user to view where they are located right now and how much time and distance far from their destination.
Reports
The driver can track their booking history and check their status. (This includes the cancelled bookings too).
Admin Dashboard and Analytics
The platform owner gets a powerful web-based console to manage all aspects of the business from a central dashboard. Get a quick summary performance.
- Rider Manager
- Driver Manager
- Vehicle Manager
- Trips Manager
- Reports Manager
- Track Rides
- Manage Payments & Booking system
- Site Settings
These are all the features that are quite important for developing a taxi booking app. Furthermore, you can improve the future versions of the Uber-like app based on the planned & implementation features and live market feedback.
ALSO READ: Build a Video Streaming Application like Netflix
The technology Stack of Uber
When it comes to the technology stack, uber refers to numerous technical tools and frameworks for performing the entire operation efficiently. So, talking about programming languages, Uber primarily uses Node JS, Python, Java and Go. They said Node JS is for the marketplace team, and Python is for everyone else. Then, they adopted Go for its efficiency, high performance and speed. Java, the open-source ecosystem can integrate with Hadoop and other tools. They use C and C++ languages to code any custom tools they require.
Get to know more about Uber’s engineering here.
Tech Team Requirement
To build a seamless taxi app like Uber, you will need a skilled technical team with knowledge and experience in Application Development. At Agira technologies, with our expertise in technology, we will help you find the best tech stack for the taxi-booking app development and provide you with passionate developers to build the same. Moreover, here is the list of the requirements of a technical team if you want to hire developers or you can simply hire an application development team.
- Business Analyst
- Project Manager
- UI/UX designer
- Android / iOS engineer
- Back-end developer
- QA engineer
How much does it cost to build a taxi app like Uber?
As always said, every application is different from each despite the type or the business logic. So, concerning the features required, tech stack involved and other complexities, the cost may differ from one another. And when it comes to developing an application for a Uber-like business idea, you will need to develop 3 applications. Let us consider the possible expenses and the things that you should pay for. Moreover, you should consider the following factors before developing any mobile application.
- iOS and Android native Mobile Application Development
- Backend Development
- Web Development
- Project Management
- Quality Assurance
It approximately takes 4000-5000 hours to develop the complete working model. Considering that, hiring developers come around $18- $50 depending upon the expertise and other skills. Therefore, it approximately falls around that value without including the charges on business analysts and others.
Agira Technologies team is always there to help you build your taxi booking app uniquely for your company from the business strategy to technical advancements. Send your request to get quotes now by contacting us.
