Do you want to do something great, something big, something unique? Have this amazing idea to create the next billion-dollar taxi pick-up app, but the question remains, how to develop an app for the same, Especially with regard to using their business processes and strategy as a basis?

You have most likely heard the term “uberisation,” derived from a taxi-hailing app Uber. The company became a real success by reflecting existing user behaviour regarding efficient and economical transportation. By the end of 2019, the Uber company had earned more than $10 billion in revenue and was rated the second most disruptive innovation company worldwide, overtaken only by SpaceX.

Well if it is surprising, Uber is the best taxi app on a global scale, and is present in more than 750 cities across 70 countries. Even with competition from other similar taxi booking apps, the company is still a dominant player within the ridesharing market. Among other apps like Uber ,OLA, Lyft, Curb, Easy Taxi, Gett, Summon, Flywheel, Grab (for Southeast Asia), DiDi (for Brazil, Mexico, Asian countries) and many others.

This blog enhances a wider view to examine how to make an app like Uber and how other apps and digital markets benefit Uber business model:

  • Strategies to follow when creating an app like Uber.
  • Unique aspects and tech stacks required for the app creation
  • Admin panel, driver app, and passenger app functionality for Uber-like apps.
  • How to develop an app like Uber and stick to the allotted budget.
  • Established revenue streams for such taxi-hailing applications
  • Tech stack & unique aspects for the apps like Uber
  • Revenue streams established for taxi booking apps

Developed by Garett Camp, Travis Kalanick, and a few of Camp’s friends in 2010, the first version of Uber was available only on iOS. Within the first half-year of the application’s launch, Uber garnered 6,000 users and completed almost 20,000 successful rides. To achieve its popularity, Uber hosted and sponsored a major tech event. Additionally, it performed test rides in San Francisco and other states in the USA. San Francisco city is more open to new technology, taking every opportunity to make life easier and more convenient. Today, the Uber app is available for free across both iOS and Android platforms, offering passengers a simple way to access taxi rides anywhere and at any time. Currently, the company completes more than 10 million rides every day and serves approximately 50 million users worldwide.

Working of the Uber App:

Uber drivers receive trip requests directly through their Uber application. These drivers use their personal vehicles to ferry Uber passengers from one place to another, thereby making a considerable income for poor family men, which is great for the people who are on the poverty line as well as the Indian economy. 

The car closest to the passenger’s location responds to the trip request. Both parties can check the other’s real-time location from within the app.

To get a better insight into how to create an app like Uber, the following 5 steps are crucial for you to understand.

  • Step 1: Create the trip request by clearly mentioning the pickup and drop off point for the drive. Customers can check the fare for the trip and also choose between various car types, so it becomes user-friendly.
  • Step 2: The next step is trip verification, where the user confirms the pickup location and all other relevant data.
  • Step 3: Finding the Uber driver located nearest to the passenger. However, the driver has the option to decline the trip request, in which case, it is passed on to the next nearest Uber driver.
  • Step 4: Users need to add digital modes of payment to the Uber app beforehand, including credit card or debit card information or also on-hand cash. Paytm, PhonePe, Google Pay are other accepted modes of payment. Passengers also have the option of modifying the default tip settings.
  • Step 5: Uber’s app prioritizes the rating system, associating the score in each ride to form a digital record of the driver. This ensures that future passengers can pick drivers accordingly.

Uber’s fare calculation is simple and effective. It considers both the time and distance for a particular trip. For instance, if the car moves slower than 16 Kilo-Meters per hour, the passenger is charged by the minute. However, if the speed is greater, he/she is charged based on the distance travelled.

Recreating the Functionality In a Uber-like App

Recreating the Lyft and Uber taxi booking app experience, PlusInfosys developed a fully-integrated custom Uber Clone App, including drivers’ and passenger’s app along with the admin panel, taking care of the dispatches and bookings. Our dedicated team of Uber developers knows what exactly it requires to develop an app like Uber. Whether you run a small or big-scale taxi start-up company, developing your own taxi app solution uplifts your taxi business.

Creating an effective taxi-hailing service, requires an in-depth understanding of the whole system. You would essentially need to create three separate apps, one of which is suitable for riders, while the other is essential for the taxi drivers. Moreover, you require an admin panel to connect these two individual apps into one fully functioning system.

  • An app for the riders
  • An app for the drivers
  • An admin app to manage the business

Additionally, your service needs to have a landing page that works as the entry point for interested users and drivers to sign up for the taxi-hailing business. Listed below are features necessary for your Uber-like app, divided into passenger-oriented, driver-oriented, and Admin panel-oriented aspects.

We have Developed These Features for Different Taxi Booking App Solutions

If you want to build a successful taxi booking app, there are features that you don’t want to miss including in your solution. Here is the list. This list came out of our experience of developing many successful Uber-like apps. We request you to make a list of features you want in your app/solution and send it to us, so we can better guide you with your requirements.

Uber for riders

Your app must include the following features for passengers’ convenience and application.

Registration

It should allow new users the ability to sign up for the taxi-hailing service through their email and Facebook accounts. Phone number verification is another important part of the registration process.

Schedule Trip

Scheduld  trips in advance as per preferred time, data, and convenience like Uber app. Allow riders to book a ride in advance so that they don’t have to wait.

Driver Tracking 

A feature to track the movement of the driver through an in-app map.

Preferred Driver

Allow riders to mark any driver as a preferred driver so that next time, the request will go to him if he is in the same vicinity.

Favourite Destination

Like Lyft app, allow riders to mark any of their visited destinations as a favorite. With just a single click, they can get their marked address.

Payment

There are two different options for riders to make payment: credit/debit card and cash. Allow riders to make payment of the ride as per the convenience.

Trip History

Check complete information about trips that are completed, upcoming, and cancelled. Even, check the pick-up and drop-off locations and fare for the specified trip.

Driver Review

Just like the Lyft taxi app, allow riders to check the reviews and feedback of all the drivers. Select the right driver for the journey by considering their reviews

Push notifications 

Notifications are essential to inform riders regarding their cab booking status, arrival time, and more. Furthermore, the notifications can also inform customers about deals and discounts.

Messaging

Hassle-free contact with the driver from within the application.

Customer support 

Option to seek help from customer support when the rider faces issues

Uber for drivers

Trip History

Allow drivers to check all the records of completed and cancelled trips. It is helpful for drivers to maintain the records of all the trips.

My Destination

Just like a destination trip in Uber, allow the driver to enter the predefined routes at the time of heading back home so that he gets requests that come in his route.

Route Selection

There are two different choices for choosing the right route, including Google Maps and Waze Map. Choose any route that suggests these two options.

Refer Driver

Drivers will get a referral code to share with other drivers to get privileges. There is an “Invite Friends” button that avails to share the code with friends.

Meeting targets – Your service can offer bonuses to drivers who meet certain criteria. For instance, finishing a predetermined number of trips each month or acquiring favorable ratings from all their riders.

Waiting time – The driver’s time is as valuable as the passengers’. Therefore, implementing a wait time is a good way to deter late arrivals in riders. With this feature, your service can charge additional money from travellers who fail to meet drivers at the location within a specified time

SOS Contacts

Allow drivers to add emergency contacts under this section. If the driver is activating SOS functionality, his added contacts will receive a text message, containing the driver’s current location.

Rider Review

It allows drivers to post a review for the rider. Even drivers are able to check all reviews given by him. Just like Lyft, it also allows its drivers to review riders on the scale of 1 to 5 stars.

Admin panel for Uber

Part of how to create an app like Uber lies in the formation of an admin panel to control and monitor the interaction between drivers and riders. Think of the admin panel as the control centre for your cab-hailing services. Take a look at the high-level functions listed below that all admin panels for Uber-like services must offer.

Manual Dispatch

Manually assign a trip request to the driver on behalf of the rider. This feature is useful in areas like low-network, where riders can’t request for a ride and for outstation customers.

Driver Transaction

Get a complete weekly report of the driver’s trip, total revenue earned, commission and the total payable amount after deductions. And, track all the drivers and their details about the trip.

Advance Fare Management

There is a very flexible pricing strategy that allows setting flexible prices based on the specific area, time and flat charges. It is extremely simple to handle the feature.

User Interactive Dashboard

The feature will help admin to have an eye on the active, completed, pending and cancelled trips on the dashboard. Under one section, track everything.

Driver Wise Commission

Set different commission rates for the different groups of drivers. With this feature, manage the commission rate of all the drivers and check and change it anytime.

Admin Reports

This feature will help admin to check the total trip statistics for a period defined. Check and track statistics of all the trips for a defined period.

We use BaaS – Backend as a Service will be very handy to develop in an Admin App. It saves you time and engineering hours, and you will not reinvent the wheel.

Other technical priorities to develop app like Uber:

You also need technical prowess and knowledge to make such an application a reality. In this portion of the article, you will learn the technical requirements for building a cab-hailing platform.

Geolocation

Geolocation is the primary technology needed for any app, similar to Uber. Therefore, such an app would rely heavily on the following navigation and mapping technologies.

  • Correctly identifying the location of the user’s device, using Google’s API locators in Android devices and CoreLocation framework for iOS mobile devices.
  • Maps are implemented in the form of Google Maps in both Android and iOS phones. Alternatively, you can also purchase map services from other mapping software projects.
  • With MapKit, you can provide accurate directions to drivers on the iOS platform, while Google Maps API performs the same function for Android device users.

Push-Notifications

After dealing with the Geolocation aspect of the application, you must next proceed to another crucial feature – Push Notifications and messaging services within the app. Uber-like apps need to have reliable ways to establish contact between drivers and riders. Right from booking a trip to ride acceptance or cancelations by the driver are integral notifications your services rely on.

Using a BaaS – Backend as a Service will simplify the implementation of both Geolocation and Push-Notifications features. These two features are already pre-built on BaaS platforms, and using it will reduce the engineering effort of implementation.

SMS

To further improve communications, you should also integrate SMS services as well. In some cases, when the user is unconnected to the Internet, they may fail to receive crucial notifications on their phones. SMS can act as a secondary mode for notifying clients. There are several services available to deliver SMSs.

Payment Integration

Payment Gateway Integration is the next important part of the application that your development team must handle. To avoid any issues later on, payment of the fare through cards should be included within your cab-hailing app. However, to proceed with Payment Gateway Integration, you need to adhere to certain policies and requirements for handling such sensitive data. Each nation’s policies in this regard tend to differ slightly, so check before proceeding with this functionality, here in India it’s Paytm, GooglePay and PhonePe who are leading in payment Integrations.

Uber-like app use cases

Developers must avoid creating an Uber clone app, hoping to duplicate the company’s success. Doing so would be a bad business tactic that will lead to misfortune for your product. Before creating the service, think about how you want it to impact people. For instance, a good idea is developing a local cab-hailing service that brings together individual drivers under a common entity.

Uber has launched its own API in the market as well, which makes it easier to implement the company’s business model into your own industry or sector. Here are some examples of how you can form an Uber-like app for the following services.

  • Healthcare services
  • On-demand beauty services
  • Grocery and food delivery services from local groceries
  • Transportation services
  • Delivery services for online products
  • On-demand home repair and cleaning services

How Much Does It Cost to Build an App like Uber?

At PlusInfosys we assure to provide affordables pricing for the radio taxi dispatch system/software and execution of the Uber and OLA like application. While calculating the actual cost of developing a Uber app for Android and iPhone, the platform (Android or iOS) also plays an important role as it affects the total hours of Uber developers. Without discussing more on the pricing of developing taxi booking apps like Uber, we dare to put this analysis of estimation here for Lyft and Uber app development cost.

Uber like App Development Process

  • Analysis of Requirements
    • Get to know our client
    • Comprehending client’s requirement
    • Proposing solution
  • Wireframing & Designing
    • Blueprint structure
    • Wireframing each screen
    • Designing the app
  • Development
    • Coding the app
    • Layout main sections
    • Client’s feedback
  • Testing
    • Testing the app
    • 100% bug-free
    • Get final approval from client
  • Deployment
    • Deploy to App Stores
    • Deploy to client’s server
    • App available for users

Uber was successful because, at the time of its launch, no other company had devised a similar cab-hailing service at such a large scale. Today, such services are commonplace, making it harder for new businesses to create a powerful impact on a global scale. Innovative ideas can always help your app go the distance. Ensuring something unique and useful with the service, which should guarantee Uber-like popularity for your brand as well, We at PlusInfosys can help you with this.