August 11, 2011 at 14:17inTaxi from VentureBrothers - ordering a taxi in the modern world
Hello.
We are a young company that is very interested in doing what makes our daily lives better. We are delighted when we see how services and services appear that were impossible to think of three-five-ten years ago.
At the end of 2010, we gathered around the idea of ourselves to deal with such a change in everyday life: to make a real service for taxi passengers, to enable people to order a taxi without unnecessary gestures, quickly conveniently and be sure of the quality of the service provided.
There were already several articles on Habré from our friends and our competitors. Each has a little his own view of the problems, his own proposals for solving them, his own business a little.
We will try to tell you about our approach, not succumbing to the desire to compare with the ideas of colleagues.
This is the story of our project.
Taxi problems in Russia (although first of all, I’m talking, of course, about Moscow) are so well known, perhaps, to everyone that they can simply be listed without going into argument.
Our product, as we decided, should, first of all, strive to solve these problems through technology. We must automate everything that can be automated. Protect the passenger where it can be protected. Rid all participants of the process from unnecessary actions. But the main thing is to transfer control to the passenger. Provide him with all the information, give him a choice, timely serve him in the process of transportation.
Perhaps the first dilemma that arose was with whom to work, who would carry passengers. The inner idealist told us: “We need to bring drivers and passengers together. Now is the century of social networks, peer-to-peer technologies, total mobilization and continuous barter. Hurrah!". Distribute to each driver and passenger according to the application and to withdraw.
Unfortunately, idealism does not work. The passenger transportation service itself is so non-trivial that there are special organizations, most of which are reduced to the management of taxi drivers, drivers, cars. The problems of quality control, safety, comfort level, logistics, tariffs, mutual settlements, all these organizations take care of. Their name is taxi parks.
When we realized that, firstly, we don’t want to do this, and secondly, that there are already people who can do this very well, we decided: let the taxi fleets take up transportation, and we will deal with passengers. We will look for them, help them make a choice, conveniently report on the process of completing the order. We will control taxi fleets in terms of quality of service. We will develop a competitive environment, thus reducing the cost of the trip. And most importantly, we will create a social environment in which taxis and passengers can influence each other.
We work with legal carriers, and we focus on taxi fleets that manage their fleet: they monitor the cleanliness of cars and the quality of drivers, take responsibility for passengers.
The inTaxi system works as follows:
About two weeks ago, we launched our iPhone app . It is expected to be called inTaxi and allows you to: 
On our site you can see a more detailed description of the application with screenshots.
In addition, the order can be made on the site intaxi.ru . When ordering from the site, notifications about the status of its implementation will be sent to you by SMS.
Anticipating the issues, the android version of the application will be released at the end of August, which we will additionally discuss. Launches in other cities (and even countries) are just around the corner, but we will be very pleased to offer cooperation in this context.
Our application has reached the top of free applications in the AppStore (now - 12th place), in the coming weeks it will be very aggressively developed and updated. The number of installations is approaching 10 thousand and their growth rate has not yet decreased.
Our immediate plans include the release of the Android version of the inTaxi application, the intriguing going offline on the streets of Moscow, the launch in several new cities, and the targeted optimization of the quality of the services we provide.
We have experience in launching successful projects, and now we are developing not only inTaxi. We hire employees, we are very looking for Python programmers and front-end developers for excellent conditions and interesting tasks. We invite to cooperation all who may be of interest: portals and services related to transport, taxi fleets, hotels and restaurants, and customers.
It will be very interesting and useful for us to hear opinions and advice from Habrahabr readers, both from the passenger side and from the point of view of IT world experts. We will be grateful for this!
In our future articles, we will tell you about what is happening in the technological world with traditional services such as taxis, how they are automated, what exactly is being introduced. We will touch upon our experience in building systems and our development processes.
See you later!
App in AppStore | Our twitter | Our facebook page
PS Watch our promo video , it's good! :)
We are a young company that is very interested in doing what makes our daily lives better. We are delighted when we see how services and services appear that were impossible to think of three-five-ten years ago.
At the end of 2010, we gathered around the idea of ourselves to deal with such a change in everyday life: to make a real service for taxi passengers, to enable people to order a taxi without unnecessary gestures, quickly conveniently and be sure of the quality of the service provided.
There were already several articles on Habré from our friends and our competitors. Each has a little his own view of the problems, his own proposals for solving them, his own business a little.
We will try to tell you about our approach, not succumbing to the desire to compare with the ideas of colleagues.
This is the story of our project.
Russian taxi. Private traders and taxis.
Taxi problems in Russia (although first of all, I’m talking, of course, about Moscow) are so well known, perhaps, to everyone that they can simply be listed without going into argument.
- The feed speed of the machine and the guarantee that it will be served at all.
- Comfort and safety of the car, driver adequacy.
- Sophisticated and often expensive rates.
- It’s not always, but often a low level of automation and comfort of providing the service: it happens that you have to hang on the phone for more than 10 minutes until you can finally place an order.
Our product, as we decided, should, first of all, strive to solve these problems through technology. We must automate everything that can be automated. Protect the passenger where it can be protected. Rid all participants of the process from unnecessary actions. But the main thing is to transfer control to the passenger. Provide him with all the information, give him a choice, timely serve him in the process of transportation.
Perhaps the first dilemma that arose was with whom to work, who would carry passengers. The inner idealist told us: “We need to bring drivers and passengers together. Now is the century of social networks, peer-to-peer technologies, total mobilization and continuous barter. Hurrah!". Distribute to each driver and passenger according to the application and to withdraw.
Unfortunately, idealism does not work. The passenger transportation service itself is so non-trivial that there are special organizations, most of which are reduced to the management of taxi drivers, drivers, cars. The problems of quality control, safety, comfort level, logistics, tariffs, mutual settlements, all these organizations take care of. Their name is taxi parks.
When we realized that, firstly, we don’t want to do this, and secondly, that there are already people who can do this very well, we decided: let the taxi fleets take up transportation, and we will deal with passengers. We will look for them, help them make a choice, conveniently report on the process of completing the order. We will control taxi fleets in terms of quality of service. We will develop a competitive environment, thus reducing the cost of the trip. And most importantly, we will create a social environment in which taxis and passengers can influence each other.
We work with legal carriers, and we focus on taxi fleets that manage their fleet: they monitor the cleanliness of cars and the quality of drivers, take responsibility for passengers.
inTaxi - our service and our products
The inTaxi system works as follows:
- The passenger places an order: indicates where and where he wants to go, what requirements and wishes he has and when he would like to do it.
- Order appears in taxi fleet systems
- Taxi parks interested in fulfilling this order make their proposals: they indicate the tariff (or a fixed price) and the time at which they can deliver the car.
- The passenger for a limited period of time (now it is 5 minutes), examines the proposals received and chooses the one that he likes the most. This taxi fleet becomes the full owner of the order.
- At a certain point in time, the taxi park assigns a specific car to fulfill the order. The passenger receives information about his model and color, license plate number, phone number and driver name (for special cases).
- When the car arrives at the launch site, the passenger is notified of this. We also remind him of the existence of a time limit for free waiting.
- Upon completion of the trip, the passenger is informed of the exact cost of the trip.
About two weeks ago, we launched our iPhone app . It is expected to be called inTaxi and allows you to: 
- order a taxi in Moscow and St. Petersburg
- see the proposed route, the forecast for it and the current traffic situation
- see a detailed description of taxi tariffs
- make a choice from the offers of several taxi parks
- receive immediate notifications of changes in order statuses
- read and write reviews
- upon arrival at the goal to receive the final cost of the order in the application
On our site you can see a more detailed description of the application with screenshots.
In addition, the order can be made on the site intaxi.ru . When ordering from the site, notifications about the status of its implementation will be sent to you by SMS.
Anticipating the issues, the android version of the application will be released at the end of August, which we will additionally discuss. Launches in other cities (and even countries) are just around the corner, but we will be very pleased to offer cooperation in this context.
State of the company
Our application has reached the top of free applications in the AppStore (now - 12th place), in the coming weeks it will be very aggressively developed and updated. The number of installations is approaching 10 thousand and their growth rate has not yet decreased.
Our immediate plans include the release of the Android version of the inTaxi application, the intriguing going offline on the streets of Moscow, the launch in several new cities, and the targeted optimization of the quality of the services we provide.
We have experience in launching successful projects, and now we are developing not only inTaxi. We hire employees, we are very looking for Python programmers and front-end developers for excellent conditions and interesting tasks. We invite to cooperation all who may be of interest: portals and services related to transport, taxi fleets, hotels and restaurants, and customers.
It will be very interesting and useful for us to hear opinions and advice from Habrahabr readers, both from the passenger side and from the point of view of IT world experts. We will be grateful for this!
In our future articles, we will tell you about what is happening in the technological world with traditional services such as taxis, how they are automated, what exactly is being introduced. We will touch upon our experience in building systems and our development processes.
See you later!
App in AppStore | Our twitter | Our facebook page
PS Watch our promo video , it's good! :)