How are you different from Meru Cabs? And why should I not book from the agent down the street?

We at Olacabs have had vivid discussions with our customers and other interested folks since our launch and have learnt a lot about how our product is perceived by people. Two questions which we were faced with often are “How are you different from Meru Cabs/Easy Cabs?” and “How are you different from any other existing car rental agent?”

Well, these are very valid questions and we’ll answer both in this blog post.

How we are different from Meru or Easy Cabs or any other Radio Taxi Service:
  • The basic difference is that Meru or Easy Cabs or any other radio taxi service is an operator of cars. They own and manage a fleet of cars. We on the other hand, are a marketplace for users to compare the offerings of various operators and book easily. To give a rough analogy, the relationship between us and Meru would be similar to that between Makemytrip and Jet Airways.
  • Another big difference is that Radio Taxis typically operate within city limits on a pay per km model. They will take you from point A to point B, say from a restaurant to your home. Our partners, on the other hand operate car rental services for outstation trips and local usage billed by the hour; for example if you need a Toyota Innova for full day or half day usage in Mumbai or want to do a weekend trip to Lonavala from Mumbai.
How we are different from traditional car rental agents:

This is where we feel we are adding a lot of value to the ecosystem with our technology.
  • Firstly, we are different from agents as we are a marketplace. Agents typically get rate quotes from operators who own and run the cars and then markup the rates to give the traveller a quote. We on the other hand list the rates and cars of all operators on our system. This brings price transparency to the whole ecosystem as any operator who keeps his rates high without reason loses customers to another.
  • An increasing number of our operator partners use our backend technology to manage their processes. This enables us to offer instant confirmations and the ease of online bookings to our users.
  • We also offer full information of the car being booked. What accessories it has like TV screens, DVD players etc. An agent will just tell you what car is available.
  • You can also see reviews and ratings of operators by other travellers and decide whom to book using that extra information.
  • Ground transport management and invoicing software solution for our business and corporate users.

So what do you think? Do we offer a viable alternative to the existing mechanisms? We’d love to hear!

 

2 thoughts on “How are you different from Meru Cabs? And why should I not book from the agent down the street?

  1. Logo Design

    Nice blog having nice information. some times we ignore this sort of things & also suffer a lot as well. However we can save a lot with the assistance of these tips for example time etc.

    Reply
  2. Logo Design

    Nice blog having nice information. some times we ignore this sort of things & also suffer a lot as well. However we can save a lot with the assistance of these tips for example time etc.

    Reply

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