a.taxi’s experience with apps & blockchain
We are a team of IT people with diverse backgrounds, and our passion with urban mobility goes back almost a decade. Our curiosity for new technologies has pushed us to always be the pioneers in this industry.
In 2009 we started working on Romania’s first public transport route planner, Transport Urban. Along the years, we’ve won several prizes, including Best iOS application,
In 2010, Dan Boabes’ payment processing company was the pioneer that introduced the option to buy transit tickets through SMS. Three years later, his company processed four millions transactions in twelve different cities.
Later on we launched Transit Director, a full-featured content management platform for public transport agencies.
Early on, we realised that public transport software can never be complete without taxi services, so we started working on mobile ridehailing apps.
Later, together with UAE partners, we launched Mondo Taxi (later re-branded as Mondo Ride) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. At that time, we were the FIRST and probably still only ones to built a taxi app on Google Glass. In 2015 we exited the venture, and Mondo Ride is now also live in Kenya.
Meanwhile, we’ve worked on several local taxi apps. The most successful one, Meridian Taxi, is operated by second largest taxi company in Romania. We have provided full technical solution (driver apps, client apps, back-end server and also call-center software with integrated text-to-speech options). More than 1,500 licensed drivers have delivered 12 millions rides.
In 2015, together with local and international partners, we launched EasyRide, “the Uber of Mongolia”. The project grew from 0 to being the leading ridehailing service, with dozens of active drivers and tens of thousands of users. The app has been so well received that it has an average rating of 4.6 stars on Google Play.
After less than two years, following vigorous and continuous complaints by the Taxi Association, Mongolian authorities have ordered our company to stop operations. EasyRide has shut down its servers on August 1st, 2017.
In all this time, we have learned some valuable lessons that we are more than willing to share. We encourage entrepreneurs around the world to launch similar ventures and help improve mobility.
As a back story, we have been Bitcoin and blockchain enthusiasts for years.
This year we started thoroughly researching smart contracts and the Ethereum network. There are many smart contracts-enabled features we can integrate into our (traditional) services, but right now we’re focusing on what we believe are the most needed ones: driver identity and trustless payment.
Understanding the opportunities smart contracts bring and considering our recent experience in having our ridehailing service censored, despite providing clear value to consumers and the community, our aim is now to build a resilient global taxi platform.
We are excited to launch a.taxi, world’s first initiative to bring existing taxi and ridesharing services on the blockchain and to create a trustless network of operators, drivers, and riders.
With more than 7 years experience in mobility, having developed and operated taxi apps on 3 continents, and understanding both the opportunities and challenges with blockchain, we believe at this point we’re among the best equiped to support decentralised global ridehailing services that truly serve their stakeholders.
