Russia’s inDriver, a venture-backed ride-hailing service with $10m in funding has launched in Nairobi, Kenya, making it the second city after it launched in April this year in South Africa and in October last year in Arusha, Tanzania.
inDriver, a five-year-old company which is live in 9 other countries across South and Central America as well as Europe allows drivers and riders to haggle prices after it a minimal base fare to cover its operations. inDriver charges no commissions on driver who are less than six months on its platform thereafter asking for between 5% to 8% in commissions.
The app also allows drivers to view both the passenger pickup and destination points before they take a ride. inDriver allows passengers to set their own fare for their chosen route. Nearby drivers who receive notice of ride requests have three choices – accept the fare offered, ignore the offer or bargain for a higher price.
The firm says it has already signed up more than 5,000 drivers in Nairobi. A unique feature of inDriver is that drivers are not automatically assigned to riders. Once the counteroffers are in, passengers select the most suitable driver in line with what categories are most important to them – fare, driver rating, estimated time of arrival or vehicle model.
inDriver has the option to make the rides safer. Passengers can share their GPS location and ride details in real time from the app with trusted contacts. Travelling with inDriver can be done throughout Nairobi’s city borders. Currently, one can pay for the ride only in cash, which allows to further reduce the cost of the trip, as when paying by card, the bank charges an additional commission.
inDriver was founded in Yakutsk, the coldest city in the coldest place in the world – Siberia. In 2012, during the New Year’s holidays, the temperature dropped below -45C and local taxi drivers simultaneously doubled the cost of trips around the city. Then, on the wave of people’s indignation, college students have created a group “Independent drivers, indrivers” in the social network “VKontakte”.
Participants of the group published where they wanted to go and the price that they were willing to pay for the trip, drivers contacted customers and carried out orders. In just six months, 50,000 participants joined the group, and it continued to grow. A year later the group became part of the company “Sinet”, which developed on its basis a high-tech peer-to-peer transportation service.
This is how inDriver was born, from the first day opposing the dictates of centralized services and taxi services. All ride terms are determined in the course of the instant bargain between drivers and passengers, without using opaque, closed algorithms prone to price manipulation. The cost of rides with inDriver is always lower because the Real-Time Deals model helps to set the optimal cost for a passenger and driver in every single second. Payments are made directly from passengers to drivers with cash and non-cash ways. This allows to reduce costs and maintain lower tariffs in the system.
Today, inDriver is one of the top 10 ride-hailing and taxi apps worldwide by downloads. The company continues its active international expansion, allowing more and more users to determine optimal ride terms and protect them from price manipulation.
This article first appeared on techmoran
