Accountant takes on taxi hailing tech giants with corporate cab app
Waytaxi founder Peter Chege demonstrates how the cab hailing app works during the interview at the Nation Centre in Nairobi on Tuesday. PHOTO | SALATON NJAU
Peter Mbugua Chege is an entrepreneur on a mission akin to the David versus Goliath biblical fable. The 37-year old accountant is taking on ride hailing giant with his own corporate-focused taxi app dubbed Waytaxi.
Mr Chege says he has already signed up about 500 taxi drivers around Nairobi metropolis, and plans to launch the Waytaxi service on August 1.
The Waytaxi app is currently available on Android only, but Mr Chege says an iOS version is being developed. The app uses GPS to connect passengers to the nearest driver.
The bookkeeper says he still sees great opportunities in the e-taxi market despite the presence of global players in the market.
“The market is very wide. I believe this is an ingenious indigenous product and I have what it takes,” Mr Chege told the Business Daily.
“Our main focus is, however, on the corporates and the government institutions where we provide a solution for them to cut costs on transport and ensure their staff ride efficiently on a fast and reliable platform hustle free,” he says.
Hassle-free
This new app cements Nairobi acclaim as a tech innovation hub which is already teeming with nearly a dozen tax apps.
Mr Chege’s Waytaxi is taking on rivals who are established players such as Uber, Mondo Ride, Little Cab, Taxify, and Maramoja.
Waytaxi will also allow individual users, but this is not the app’s target market.
“We will provide free Wi-Fi for drivers and our clients,” he said, a move akin to Safaricom-backed Little Cab which also provides Internet at no cost to passengers and offers drivers smartphones.
Waytaxi charges for a cab in Nairobi is Sh60 per kilometre and Sh4 per minute, with no base fare nor price surges, Mr Chege said, adding that the minimum fare per trip is Sh200.
He says his strategy will be to focus on corporate and government agencies by providing them a taxi solution that eliminates the hassle of keeping a receipt book which has to be signed by the boss.
Mr Chege says payment options will be limited to mobile money for individual passengers while corporate clients will have the option of settling their bills based on agreed terms.
“We have developed a platform where once payment is paid to the taxi M-Pesa paybill, a notification is sent to the driver and so there is no need to show the driver your phone,” she said.
The app will also save users the bother of calling taxi companies whose numbers always seem to be busy or they lie to you where they actually are, says Mr Chege, adding that the app shows you the location of the cab.
“We provide a link to the corporate admin who will be managing and controlling on usage by the staff within the organisation. The admin will also be in charge of adding or removing any staff from the corporate link,” said Mr Chege.
The link works in such a way that when a member of staff requests for a cab from Waytaxi, the request first goes to the administrator for approval or denial, explains the entrepreneur.
Once approved, the request is then forwarded to the nearest driver, and the staff who hailed the cab will be notified if the request has been cleared.
When the Waytaxi driver receives the request, it will indicate that it is a corporate client and therefore the driver will not ask for payment because the customer’s account will be billed, he says. If rejected, the staff member will get a report that the request has been declined.
Such a user has the option of using his/her personal account to request for a ride, says the accountant.
Mr Chege graduated from the University of Nairobi with a bachelor of commerce degree in accounting in 2006.
The native of Cherangany, Trans-Nzoia County, first worked as an accountant at International House Limited — a property firm owned by billionaire businessman Chris Kirubi. He left employment in September 2012 to pursue dairy farming in Naivasha. However, in 2014, he quit the milk venture to try “something new”.
The idea to develop Waytaxi was born after he lost a tender to provide taxi services floated by Two Rivers Mall. “I failed. I didn’t have the capacity and the tender didn’t allow sub-leasing. I then thought of doing this independently,” says Mr Chege.
He says tender required someone to provide 150 taxis to be stationed in and about the mall set to opened in March next year.
In November last year, Mr Chege began developing the taxi app. He hired George Opiyo, a techie and co-founder of Air BI Technologies, to help develop the software.
Price surges
Mr Chege declined to reveal how much he has invested in developing Waytaxi, putting the figure at “several millions”.
Waytaxi will take a 15 per cent cut from drivers’ earnings, he says.
There are no age restrictions on eligible cars to be signed up to the Waytaxi platform, according to the founder. Vehicles need to be clean and have undergone inspection to be road worthy, adds Mr Chege.
His plans are to expand Waytaxi services to other major cities and towns in Kenya, and targets 2,000 drivers by the end of the year and 10,000 drivers countrywide by end of 2017.
Little Cab, developed by local IT firm Craft Silicon, is charging passengers Sh55 per kilometre and Sh4 per minute — with no flat base charge or price surges.
Dubai-based Mondo Ride charges for a cab in Nairobi is Sh58 per kilometre and Sh4 per minute in addition to a base fare of Sh100.
Uber charges in Kenya is priced at Sh60 for every kilometre covered and Sh4 per minute in addition to a base fare of Sh100. The San Francisco app has price surges.
Estonian app Taxify users pay Sh50 per kilometre, Sh5 per minute, and a base charge of Sh100.
