The press release claims Taxify has never entered a country’s market as fast as it did here. “Hundreds of people had downloaded our application even before our service was launched,” says Dániel Cziraki, operative leader of the firm in Hungary. “Our service has become so popular that our car park needed to be expanded in a haste, which means at this time we can serve our customers with approximately 100 cars,” Cziraki adds.

Taxify’s reported success in Budapest is apparently due to the fact that U.S.-based ride-sharing company Uber pulled out of the country a few weeks before the arrival of Taxify, citing strict new regulations the Hungarian government adopted after local taxi drivers demonstrated numerous times against what they had claimed was unfair competition.

Taxify acknowledges this, saying ex-Uber customers probably form the core of its current customer base. Although Taxify’s prices are close to Hungarian taxi fares, the application believes that extra services, such as its innovative application and the rating system of cars and their drivers, offer advantages over traditional taxis.

Another advantage over traditional taxis, Cziraki notes, is that travelers can trace back their previous rides in the application on a map, and therefore can double-checked whether the drivers chose the best directions. In the first full month the firm operated here there were more than 10,000 registered journeys, with two-thirds of travelers paying for their ride through the Taxify application.

One of the major aims of Taxify is to put an end to bad taxi practices, such as overcharging customers, and taking travelers on longer and slower routes, Cziraki stresses in the statement.

By Christian Keszthelyi

Source: BBJ

Republished with permission