Catch a TukTuk Ride, India’s newest app-based taxi service focusing on small towns

It might be safe to suggest that most urban Indians have used an app-based taxi service at least once, if not more, in the last few years. Because… well, “convenience” is too hard to ignore, especially if one gets it with just a few taps on their smartphone.

As a result, India’s ride-hailing market is on an upsurge. Currently dominated by Ola and Uber, the sector is estimated to be worth $675 million in 2019, and $1.13 billion by 2023. And yet, penetration of app-based taxi services is only about 2 percent (expected to hit 2.9 percent by 2023), according to Statista.

This is primarily because most taxi aggregators, so far, have focused on the top 10-12 citiesand tapped into urban demand to build up buzz, cultivate usage, and become more visible. Even though Ola and Uber have launched services in a few Tier II towns, their approach remains top-down, more than bottom-up. And, this is what Noida-based entrepreneur Yash Kapoor wanted to change when he conceived TukTuk Ride in early 2018.

TukTuk Ride is India’s latest app-based ride-hailing service that launched in Delhi-NCR in January, after about 10 months of being in development. It will roll out in Indore, Bhopal, Kanpur, Lucknow, Jaipur, and Udaipur by the end of the year. And by 2020, TukTuk will ride into 20 small towns, where smartphones prevail, but app-taxis are absent.

Founder Yash tells YourStory,

“These are towns where the Ola/Uber service is very poor or entirely missing. They are not focusing on these places even though people here are aware of ride-hailing services. They have their smartphones, they use apps, and they want to take a cab ride. Agar everything is digital today, phir cabs kyun nahi?”