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There has been a lot of buzz in the auto booking segment, started with cab booking only, now cab hailing apps have added auto to their offerings, thus making them one stop destination for booking vehicles a customer wants anytime-anywhere. After Ola, now Uber and Taxiforsure also offer auto booking, well that’s not enough number of startups have also emerged in this particular segment to tap this market.
One such startup, backed by the Rajasthan Angel Investment Network (RAIN), Jaipur based ChalogeKya has launched its mobile application using which a passenger with a smartphone can locate and call the closest auto rickshaw for pick-up.
The company differentiates themselves from these players stating that it works with a combination of GPS and cell tower triangulation to enable direct contact between the passenger and auto, without the involvement of ChalogeKya.
“We had launched the application for pilot testing in the second week of February. Around 50 autos having smartphones were signed up and close to 300 customers used the application to find and call these autos,” Apoorv Sharma, co-founder of Chalogekya said.
The startup realised during the pilot that there is a need to think beyond smartphones for locating autos and after discussing with couple of telecom service providers, thus they came up with the new technology that does not require the autos to have a smartphone to track their location on the passenger app.
The company has tied up with Airtel and Idea for providing location based services using GPS and triangulation methods for the auto rickshaws across Rajasthan. Further, the startup is also in talks with e-mitra kiosks for payment collection services for auto rickshaws across the state which would give them coverage in more than 40 towns and cities of the state through the 5,000 plus emitra state.
The company currently has signed up close to 300 auto rickshaws and almost all of them are active as on date. It only charges a small monthly subscription fee from Autos which enables makes them to be visible to the passenger on the ChalogeKya application. Autos can sign up using a regular phone with the SIM provided by the startup.
According to a research, Jaipur has more than 26,000 rickshaws with more than one lakh passenger rides on a daily basis. India has more than 50 lakh auto rickshaws distributed over the top 100 cities, translating into a market size of INR 50,000 Cr.
“We are now ready to scale up our services seamlessly in Jaipur and across Rajasthan,” said the company.”
Jugnoo is another player in this segment, but it also offers hyper local delivery service to the customers through autos.
Chekout the Chalogekya App Here.
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