Hangzhou Kuaidi Technology Co., a taxi-booking service backed by Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd., has officially registered its trademark in Macau SAR and is preparing to launch its online taxi hailing services in three months. “Macau has very few taxis – with more then 600,000 residents and over 30 million tourists per year, around 1,000 taxis are simply not enough,” said Ye Yun, Director of Public Relations of Kuaidi Group. “With the launch of our services, it would see a significant improvement in efficiency of taxi services and help reduce taxi vacancy rates (taxi running without passengers).” Based in Hangzhou, a Chinese city in Zhejiang Province, Kuaidi Dache has grown to become one of the leading and most widely used mobile taxi booking app providers in China. Users of smartphones with Android, Apple or Windows systems can download the application and register, while taxi drivers use the same app and have their information verified. When a customer orders taxi services by typing in a destination, the app accesses the GPS information of both parties and sends out alerts to taxi drivers near the passenger. The driver who picks up the order first can call the passenger directly to arrange pick-up. Once the journey is finished, both sides can evaluate each other, with a record kept. Currently, Kuaidi Dache’s app combines integrated mapping and third party payment technology to provide widely accessible booking services to over 1 million taxis in more than 360 cities in China, including Hong Kong, as well as a range of standard and luxury cars to suit a variety of lifestyles. The latest available data provided by Beijing-based consultancy firm Analysys International shows Kuaidi Dache leading the industry with a 56.5 per cent share of the mobile taxi booking market in China by cumulative user accounts in the fourth quarter of last year. SAR markets Founded in the Summer of 2012, Kuaidi tapped into the Hong Kong market as early as October 2013. Ye Yun told Business Daily that thousands of taxis in Hong Kong now have the app installed, giving Kuaidi a market share of over 30 per cent in Hong Kong, more than international competitors such as U.S.-based Uber. Kuaidi Dache considers Hong Kong an entry point to the overseas market, with Macau second on the list, followed by East Asia. While Ye Yun said regulatory and legislative matters are not a big issue when entering the SAR markets, in order to adapt to foreign markets, some adjustments had to be made. The Kuaidi spokesperson said online payment in Mainland China, for example, is rather popular with the use of Alipay but people in the SARs are more used to credit cards and other payment methods. Hence, the car service app has to integrate with other third party technologies. Moreover, a traditional Chinese version of the app has been promoted, on top of the original simplified Chinese one, with English version, Japanese and other languages in the pipeline. Ye Yun said now they have finished registering the branch in Macau the company is preparing the team and further studying the market in the belief that the experience the company has accumulated in Hong Kong can be transferred. He added that the company’s managerial level has some Hong Kong staff and people that have studied overseas with the knowledge of the needs of foreign markets, which gives them the confidence to expand the businesses outside China. When commenting on the on-call taxi saga in the Macau SAR, Mr. Ye admitted that he is not familiar with Macau’s market but generally speaking an on-call taxi service is far less efficient than using a mobile app since it is based on telephone calls and an operator is needed, which means more clients require more operators leading to increased cost. Mr. Ye added that with current technology and an exponentially growing smartphone user base, the traditional on-call service will be weeded out of the market.
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