My vacation last month involved extensive travel across Tamil Nadu. It was perfect timing to catch up on eclectic events - the annual "Chithirai festival" in Madurai, similar annual festivities in my ancestral place near Karaikudi, and what better time to chill out in Ooty to beat the sweltering Indian Summer. More details on the festivities in a later post.
Here, I wanted to talk logistics - my experiences with radio cab booking during my travel. Accustomed to using Uber, Ola and the likes in Hyderabad or in my business trips to the metros, I've never looked for options or modalities beyond them. Don't we love their availability round the clock and the convenience of 2-tap booking on their apps? The booking-scheduling-tracking lifecycle works seamlessly.
However, when I instinctively took to cab booking, this time in the tier-2 cities and towns like Madurai, Thanjavur, Karaikudi, it brought forth some teething logistics issues. Cab providers such as Ola, Savaari, NTL Taxi provide coverage, and the issue is more to do with the booking channel & modalities than with the anything else.
The data network is patchy at best in several parts of these cities, so much that getting a continuous 2G signal is a luxury. There were several instances where the app doesn't refresh or shows cab availability with a huge lag. I often lost connection after booking a cab, and couldn't track status or even cancel the booking. Once, I ended up accidentally booking a cab in Coimbatore, while I was looking for local commute within Madurai! I had travelled back from Coimbatore and the map didn't refresh until I made the booking.
Apart from network issues, its also the adaptability of all segments of users to this channel. I know of family and relatives back at home who are loathe to using an app for booking, but are quite comfortable with calls or SMS.
That got me thinking whether radio cabs through apps is a universal solution for India. We have so many segments of users with varying levels of tech adoption. The problem of non-uniform/poor connectivity & logistics infrastructure will take a while to get ironed out. Wouldn't it make sense to have a secondary system also enabled?
What about a SMS-based booking system for cabs? User sends SMS to a designated number with the requested cab type (SUV, Sedan, hatchback), time and current location pincode. Cab company sends back a confirmation SMS or incase of non-availability, mentioning alternate cab types available / asking user to choose alternate time. To get user's exact location within the area, driver calls the user (this anyway happens even in metros for app-booking, since the GPS location shown on map is at best approximate). All status updates are pushed subsequently by cab company through SMS, and users can enquire status/cancel request through a simple SMS.
This avoids the need for archaic telephone booking and the need to staff operators who coordinate manually. A SMS-based system can well be automated and perhaps even be integrated at the backend with the app-based systems. This would score as an inclusive approach, given the demands of a developing country like ours.
3 comments:
Nice post, Ganes!
One more thing about the driver calling the user is the language barrier -- what if there aren't any people around to help or if it's late night?
It's also concerning that our country isn't as well connected as commonly believed, while media pushes ads like "Airtel 4G" on top of mountains and in forests :)
Interesting challenge to solve!
Thank, Suhas. Yes, language barrier is a challenge. Perhaps until Google or someone cracks the real-time natural language translation usecase, just as one speaks! This actually may not be very far, since there are already first-cut solutions for real-time image translation.
True, all the '4G' ads are a hype to stretch our imagination, than pointing towards a reality.
Very Good Work.
Post a Comment