Yesterday Uber announced its foray into bike taxi segment and have termed it Uber Moto. This move will make India as the second market where the world’s most valuable startup, Uber Inc will offer motorbike taxi! It is barely a week before that Uber had announced launch of its bike taxi service in Bangkok. Bangalore is chosen as the test city where the services will be initiated and the market will be explored. Uber has been very flexible in testing its India-centric innovations – earlier cash payments, later launching auto services and now bike taxis. Uber will be leaving no stone unturned to build India as one of its biggest market in terms of revenue. Just within few hours of announcement from Uber, India’s biggest taxi aggregator Ola declared its entry into bike taxis.
UberMOTO, will have a base fare of Rs.15 and will charge Rs.3 per km apart from Rs.1 for every minute of the ride time. Ola will charge Rs.2 for every km apart from Rs.1 per minute ride time charge, on a base fare of Rs.30.
We had predicted the rise in trend of Bike Taxis previously here. Bangalore is seen as the breeding ground for bike taxi providers and is already home to over seven such start ups (Mu Ride, Pilot, Streetryderr, Rapido, HeadLYT, Hey Bob and Pillionaire). Bangalore is one of the most congested cities in India and two wheelers have earned their reputation as the fastest mode of transportation in the growing metropolitan. Bike Taxis have already tasted success in similar conditions in other Asian Markets (specifically Indonesia) and India seems to have a huge potential. The other city which has attracted service providers has been Gurgaon – Bikxie Pink, M-Taxi, N.O.W Bike Taxi, Rideji and Baxi have already established their operations here.
India’s infrastructure, road safety, weather conditions and government regulations will be the biggest challenges for these startups. However, we are sure that the consumer demand will slowly ward off these challenges and will nurture such initiatives. As per the state transport department, Bangalore had 3.8-million two-wheelers, including motor bikes, scooters and mopeds, compared to 1.1-million cars as of March 2015. India is also one of the largest markets for two wheelers with sales more than doubling to 16 million in 2015 up from 7 million in 2008. The availability of such numbers of two wheelers should enable easy access to bike drivers.