Hyderabad: You don’t need to reinvent the wheel to become an entrepreneur. Some tweaking here and there to make the existing model more people-friendly can also make your business successful. Srikanth Lingidi, founder and CEO of Apna Cabs, has done just this.
This Hyderabad-born techie returned to India after a brief stint in the United States to try his luck in entrepreneurship, a decision which lead to the setting up of Apna Cabs.
“Business had always attracted me since my childhood. So though I had gone to the United States during post-Y2K period in 2000, I never intended to stay back. In 2013, I came back and set up Apna Cabs, a mobile-based aggregator for Kaali Peeli (black and yellow) taxis in Mumbai,” he recalls.
There are many taxi aggregators such as Uber, Ola, Oranga Cabs, Green Cabs, etc. So what’s the USP of Apna Cabs? Pat comes the reply from Srikanth: It is the first aggregator, which was approved by a government. Unlike Uber and Ola, Srikanth claims Apna Cabs is a government-approved service which has at least 1,600 Kaali Peeli and Cool Cabs working under its brand name.
Apna Cabs is also a mix of taxi aggregator and radio cab service. “Unlike Uber and Ola, we can brand the cars and also use the external car space for earning extra money from commercial advertisements. So basically, it is a mix of aggregator and radio taxi,” said Srikanth.
“Even though Apna Cabs got the government permit in November 2015, we have been operational since last two years as a pure-play aggregator,” he said. Under the Call Taxi Scheme, 2010, he said there would be no limit on the fleet size that Apna Cabs would like expand to. “But other unregulated cab services cannot do this. So we have a clear advantage over them,” he said, adding that Mumbai needs the services of at least 30,000 more taxis.
Apart from Apna Cabs, BookMyCab has also received this license. Speaking about the most common complaint of unprofessional attitude by drivers of Kaali Peeli taxis, Srikanth said they are now conducting classes to refine their behaviour.
Talking about the future, the Apna Cabs foun-der said he wants to use his taxi fleet and his knowledge of business analytics to launch a taxi pooling service which will be friendly on commuter’s pocket and also help in reducing the vehicular pollution.
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