This new year, you may be looking forward for a business idea that can expedite your revenue and help you to build a brand. The world of mobile apps has umpteen opportunities to be explored where you can launch an exceptional app to serve the purpose. Have you ever thought over launching a robust and swift taxi app? Well, if not so, this is the right time to ponder deep into taxi app development where you can really leverage the ever-increasing demand for custom taxi apps. The online taxi industry has been growing at an unprecedented rate and people respond well to these taxi apps if you have taken into account their convenience and flexibility. All you need to do is to conduct extensive research on some taxi apps that are already prevalent in your area or country and just evaluate what else can be added in it to offer much comfort for people to book a cab instantly.

Apps like Uber Lyft, DIDI, and OLA are exemplary and a motivation to proceed with your taxi app development idea. And if you are thinking that these apps have already captured the market and there are several other taxi apps, then you are underestimating the power of innovation and creativity. This blog will offer valuable insights on OLA-like app development cost, features, and some other crucial aspects that can help your taxi app gain instant recognition.

A Brief History of OLA

ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd. operates under the trade name OLA with headquarter in Bengaluru, India. The concept came into existence in December 2010 and since then, the company never looked back. The company adopted the aggregator model of taxi services and started networking with local cab and taxi drivers to join them. It started acquiring several local taxi services which were struggling hard to get enough passengers. The company made best use of technology and networking to offer custom taxi services to a wide range of population. In 2017, it acquired India-based FoodPanda with a vision to leverage food delivery segment. The app currently has more than 200 million customers worldwide with 1.5 million rides completed each day.

Must-have Features for a Taxi App like OLA

Features are the most critical aspect of any mobile app that decides the level of success that an app will receive by users. You need to be very particular and intuitive while choosing them for your taxi app development project. Let’s have a look on some features that made OLA; a big success.

User Panel Features

• Social Signup
• Profile Creation
• Pickup & Drop location
• Real-time vehicle tracking
• In-app chat & calling
• Fare Calculation
• Payment Integration
• Ratings & Reviews
• Add locations to Favorite
• Vehicle Selection
• Travel History

Driver Panel Features

• Social Login Profile Creation
• Push Notifications
• Accept/Reject a Booking
• In-app chat
• GPS-assisted Route Navigation
• Ratings & Reviews
• Payment Integration
• Payment History

Admin Panel Features

• Social Login Profile Creation
• Drivers Management
• Payment Management
• Analytics and Reports
• Manage Cab availability
• View Trip Routes
• Manage Discounts & Offers
• Track Cabs in real-time
• Manage Drivers’ feedback

With these basic features and functionalities, you can launch a highly responsive and user-centric taxi app for your target audience. Of course, you have the option to add your niche to your taxi app to make it discrete.

OLA-like App Development Cost

The next important thing is to estimate OLA like app development cost and this will depend on several crucial factors.

• Type of Taxi app development company
• Number of Features to be incorporated
• Use of Advanced Technologies
• Project Complexity
• Type of Taxi App (Native, Cross-platform or web-based)

Out of these five crucial aspects, you can eliminate the use of advanced technology at initial stage and can later provide an update to your app on it. The rest four aspects will significantly contribute to the development cost of your taxi app development project.

We have thoroughly worked on some taxi app development projects including OLA, Lyft, DIDI, and Uber, and have come up with an average development cost for a taxi app development project similar to OLA. If you are hiring an India-based taxi app development company, you have to spend somewhere between USD 20000 to 28000. Hiring any other development agency outside India like UK and USwill certainly add to the development cost and it may reach USD 28000 to 35000. This is an estimate to develop a native app from scratch for Android.

Focus on Drivers’ Community as Well

One of the major reasons behind unbounded success of Uber, OLA, and Lyft is that they equally focused on both users and drivers’ community to keep them contented. Apart from robust networking with local taxi drivers, your app must cater to their needs and requirements. Make them feel that you are concerned for them and as your app makes progress and you develop a huge userbase, decide some portion of profit to be utilized for their welfare too. It is then drivers will put all their efforts to make your customers feel happy during the rides.

Ask for Appealing UI/UX Designs

Ask your pickup and drop app development company to make some state-of-the-art UI/UX designs for your taxi app. This will help it to gain maximum recognition from users. Modern-day people often focus on visual appeal of an app and make an instant decision based on it. The next important aspect is the user experience. Keep your navigational aspect quite comprehensive and simple so that everyone can use your app effectively to hail a ride via it.

Prepare a Pre-launch Marketing Strategy

There are millions of apps available on both Google and Apple stores and you must make an effective marketing strategy to help your app gain top rankings on the app stores’ search results. An experienced and expert taxi app development company can do this for you. They also provide much-required pre-launch technical support for your app to be launched effectively on the app stores. This will save you from any disappointment after investing so much effort and money on taxi app development.

Plan for Monetization

There must be a well-planned strategy to monetize your app.  After all, al this effort has been put to earn huge revenues from your taxi app. Hence, make sure that you adopt the best monetization techniques to yield maximum ROIs. Here are some most commonly used monetization methods (besides fares) that most taxi apps have used till now.

• Subscription Model: You can provide some customized features for those who buy a subscription plan for your taxi app. This is a much trending aspect in apps to generate good revenue.
• Advertisement: As your app enhances its userbase, you will find umpteen organizations to display their ads on your app’s interface.
• Data Monetization: You can use your Big Data analysis to earn revenue from the data collected from your app.

All these methods will help your taxi app to earn maximum revenue as it progresses towards capturing maximum users.

End Note

You need to adopt a professional approach towards taxi app development project. Research well on your target audience and try to figure out what needs to be delivered to keep them engaged with your taxi app. Hire the best experienced pickup and drop app development company and prepare a detailed project requirement list. Rest all will be handled by your taxi app development company.