Recently many companies have emerged in the online car rental services aggregation business (viz MakeMyTrip for Cab booking). Another company to enter into this segment recently is GetMeCab.com.
GetMeCab.com, which is owned and operated by Unicus Infolabs Pvt Ltd, is an online aggregator and seller of cab rental services across India. The site ties up with select car rental companies and brings their inventory online. The entire process of searching, booking, payment and confirmation is handled online on the website. Customers can also make booking via phone. The company also caters to corporate and b2b partner network. The company claims to has a fleet management system which help the car rental operators to improve their service quality as well as operational efficiency.
GetMeCab was launched in April 2011 and has been experiencing rapid growth over the period. The company have seen very encouraging response since launch and currently do around 300 transactions, serving around 900 customers per month.
Started by two IIMA graduates Udai Singh Meena and Amit Lakhotia, GetMeCab.com is targeting revenues of about Rupees 2 crore in the current fiscal year.
The founders have been working in the travel e-commerce space for the last 4 years in MakeMyTrip.com and have seen it grow exponentially, taking airlines, hotels, trains and finally, bus bookings into its ambit. The Indian customer today is ready to book online if he sees a value in the offerings. The founders saw an opportunity to do the same in the cab rental industry which is currently highly fragmented and lack standardization. Understanding of the travel e-commerce market as well the size of the opportunity in hand gave the founders the confidence to take the plunge and start GetMeCab.com.
The cab rentals in India is a Rs. 20000 crore industry and is growing by about 30-35% annually, according to GetMeCab.com co-founder Amit Lakhotia. Currently the market is highly fragmented and dominated by smaller players. There are multiple pain points in this industry both on the supplier side as well as the customer side.
Since most of the online players in this business are in nascent stage, it would be premature to make a comparison between them right now. Everyone is trying to build an ecosystem that enables and drives the customer to book cabs online. However some of the places where GetMeCab.com differentiates itself from competitors are
- Experienced team members who have built and managed large size e-commerce business in online travel.
- Semi-National presence. While the other players are takng a regional presence approach, GetMeCab.com already have a semi national presence with booking operations in Delhi/NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore and Jaipur.
The company is not aggressively looking to raise funding right now. The current focus is on setting up the operations in place and building a sound prototype of the business model. However they will start looking for funding after 2-3 months to expand operations and offer more services.
I read your blog carefully and i like it very much.India Is a big tourist place in the world.India has so many adventure places, Historical places to visit.I also visit India with Car Rentals in India.
I like the idea… though there are many players now in the space. I recently used a similar service from Gozocabs.com. I feel there might be others too.