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How to Develop a Taxi App like Uber? : It's Business model & Technical Considerations

How to Develop a Taxi App like Uber? : It's Business model & Technical Considerations

Mushahid783 29-May-2019

When a unique idea raises a toast to success, the competition makes efforts to create a clone of the same and repeat the success. Similar is the story of Uber whose success has appealed several entrepreneurs and they tried to Uberize the taxi services with Taxi Booking Software development. Are you the one who wants to offer taxi services on-demand? If so, you can create the next Uber.

How to Develop a Taxi App like Uber? : It

Image source: www.yourstory.com

But building an app like Uber and getting a large piece of the ridesharing market is not so rosy. It involves offering frictionless services to the drivers and riders, establish a brand and build credibility. Uber did the same. They come up with an on-demand economy idea, blended it with a technology stack to solve the people’s real problem, and launched it.

Take a few glimpses of Uber’s growth:

Uber- the most feared startup in the world which was founded in 2009, spread like a wildfire and become the world’s most valuable startup spanning across 633 countries and generating the revenue of whopping $70 billion dollars. The road was not easy. The company fought with rivals, and regulators, and even confronted the threat from its own drivers and taxi industry. But, intelligent tactics, go-to marketing strategies, and advanced technology usage helped Uber to continue climbing up the ladder of its valuation and userbase.

The story of Uber that moved from an idea to the worldwide phenomenon is interesting. However, before jumping on the Uber-clone app development train, it’s essential to understand the business model and technology stack in detail to play the game effectively.

Here’s the Business model:

Uber, that’s known as a taxi booking platform is, in reality, a cab aggregator that has partnered with a multitude of cab operators and individual drivers to provide the ride on request. Basically, there are three types of the business model that can be employed. They are:

  • Aggregator model

The passengers connect with booking system providers, then the system provider connects with taxi operator or car owners to check the availability of taxi, and then the taxi booking request is accepted and assigned to the passengers.

  • Ownership model

The small taxi operators facilitating online taxi booking software that allows the passengers to book a taxi right through the smartphone without waiting for the response come from taxi booking system provider.

  • Revenue generation model

Relying on a single revenue model is not sufficient to generate a constant stream of revenue. Uber leverage different revenue models to earn and build an 8-figure venture. They are premium car services, surge in pricing during peak hours, penalties for delays or changing schedule, additional cost for extra accessories or amenities, pay-per-performance, receive a commission on every sale, and charge a fee from the cab operators for using technology platform facilities.

The taxi startups must choose the business model prudently depending on the budget, resources, and time investment.

Let’s shed some light over the Uber’s business model:

Request for taxi service: The very first step in the Uber business model is raising the demand for the taxi services where the passengers request for a ride alongside specifying the schedule, location, and car related needs.

Match request and Notify the drivers: When the passengers create a demand for taxi booking, the request is notified to the nearby drivers. When any of the drivers accept the request, the booking confirmation and driver’s information is sent to the passenger.

Details of ride: In addition to ETA, the passengers can also track the route that taxi is taking as soon as the journey begins.

Payment process: Upon the ride completion, the passengers have to pay for the ride and the amount to pay is calculated based on the number of the kilometer traveled, the base fare, extra cost for amenities, waiting charge, toll tax, and more.

Rate the performance: Post-ride completion, the passengers are asked to rate the driver’s performance and their experience with taxi services.

Uber has become the best on-demand taxi booking solution with the right mix of resources, infrastructure, and technology. Let’s check out Technical Considerations and specific technologies Uber used to perform to the notch and get valued in billions of dollars.

The technology stack to build a taxi app like Uber:

Geo-location: The online taxi services play around the location where it’s important for the passengers to track driver’s location for assisting him in reaching out to the pickup location or share the location during the ride with friends. Here, the CoreLocation framework and Google’s location APIs are leveraged to identify the geographic region and monitor user’s device movement. The MapKit and Google Maps Android API integration with Uber app enables seamless navigation.

Notifications: The slew of notifications are sent to the passengers and drivers at various steps of the ride-booking. The messages are sometimes sent in the form of SMS and push notifications. The technology stack for push notifications in Android is Google Firebase and for iOS phones, it’s Apple Push. The text messages can be powered by cloud communication platforms such as Twilio, Tropo, Plivo, and Nexmo.

Payment gateway: Uber allows passengers to pay cashless using plastic cards or PayPal. Before accepting the payment through cards, the company has to fulfill the PCI requirements to get a merchant ID. Uber has partnered with a Braintree payment gateway to accept payment with cards (Some uses Stripe as well). PayPal’s Card.io services help in linking the credit card without manually entering credit card data just by scanning on the iOS app. Also, the PayPal integration with Uber helps in paying for the taxi services directly through PayPal accounts.

Infrastructure storage: The back-end services are incorporated using PostgreSQL and TripStore, and back-end languages such as Node.js, Python, Java, PHP, and Ruby on Rails. Hadoop warehouse is used for distributed storage and analytics; Clusto for inventory management; SVG, Canvas 2D, and WebGL for mapping visualize


Mushahid Khatri is a solution consultant at Yelowsoft and one of the leading Taxi Booking app development company in 2011. He believes in sharing his strong knowledge base with leaned concentration on entrepreneurship and business.

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