Easy Taxi Launching In Nairobi On Sept. 6th, With 600 Drivers Registered Already
Rocket Internet’s Easy Taxi will on Saturday, September 6th, officially launch to the public in Nairobi. Easy Taxi entered the Kenyan market back in April and as of now has ten full-time employees, 600 registered cab drivers and more than 2500 users.
The launch event will be at Kuona Trust in Kilimani, kicking off at 2pm and winding up at 6pm. The launch event is expected to be attended by media companies, bloggers, twitter big-wigs and the general public.
The event will be marked by a Scavenger Hunt/ the Amazing Race where 25 teams are expected to race against one another through five challenge zones around the city with free transport being provided by Easy Taxi. The Amazing Race challenge will include singing competition, boat races, cooking and other surprises. The race competitors will be group in a team of four.
Easy Taxi was first launched in Brazil back in 2011 and has since spread throughout the globe, covering 30 countries and over 130 cities spreading at the rate of three cities per month. By November 2013, Easy Taxi reported it has already 3 million users worldwide and over 100,000 cab drivers registered to its database.
Easy Taxi has four different products launched in the market serving different needs of passengers in Nairobi: the Easy Taxi Mobile App, Easy Taxi Pro, Easy Taxi Web App and Easy Taxi Corporate.
Uber, another taxi hailing service which recently launched in Nigeria is also expected to enter the Kenyan market within the next few months. By then, Easy Taxi plans to have already established its brand name into the Kenyan market and possibly doubled up the number of registered cab drivers in its database.
Even though Easy Taxi’s business model varies slightly from that of Uber, the latter’s entry into the Kenyan market is expected to increase competition immensely. Nairobi already has more than five taxi hailing services in operations; the entrance of Easy Taxi and Uber is setting the stage for a fierce competition among the taxi hailing services.
