The advent of ride-hailing apps in Nigeria has transformed the way we move around in different cities. With these apps, people are guaranteed the basic essentials of a hired ride, such as comfort, promptness, and fair charges. Here are five top ride-hailing apps that have changed the transport game in Nigeria.
Oga Taxi
Oga Taxi is the first ride-hailing app to emerge in Nigeria, with the potential to compete and overtake foreign players like Taxify and Uber. It was launched in 2016 by Michael Nnamadim and Ameh Idoko, it offers distinctive customer-centric features to ensure an enjoyable riding experience. These features include the classic(solo) ride and a pooled ride option.
The pooled ride option enables the passengers to choose who they want to ride with –a matching algorithm shows profiles of people heading in the same direction as they –and thus guarantees them a discount of up to 40%. Oga Taxi has its headquarters in Abuja but operates in cities of Lagos, Port Harcourt, and Abuja.
Bolt(Taxify)
Formerly known as Taxify, Bolt is one of the fastest-growing ride-hailing apps in the world. It is an Eastern ridesharing company that has spread across 20 cities across 15 countries, including Africa and it made its entry into Lagos, Nigeria in 2016. Just like other ride-hailing platforms, it makes use of a smartphone app to establish a relationship between drivers and riders.
GidiCab
GidiCab is a new entrant to the Nigerian ride-hailing ecosystem. It was launched in 2019 by the owners of GidiTraffic(a Twitter page “@giditraffic” committed to giving its followers traffic updates around Lagos).
GidiCab’s most unique feature is “Borrow a ride”, which enables passengers who cannot afford to pay for their trip at the moment, take a free ride and pay later. The platform’s app also has a live billing feature which allows the passengers to see how much they are paying for the trip. They can detect if something is amiss and request for the trip to come to an end if they are not comfortable with the amount they can see.
Uber
Uber is a ride-hailing platform that was launched in 2009, with its headquarters in San Francisco. It currently operates in over 600 cities in over 65 countries. Uber was launched in Nigeria in 2014. It is the first ride-hailing platform to operate in the country.
Just like other ride-hailing services, it makes use of a smartphone app to create a relationship between drivers and riders. One of the unique features of Uber is the “Split Fare” feature which allows users to divide the fare amount with up to three people directly in the app(although they’ll all need their own uber accounts) simply swiping up, tapping their selected payment method and then choosing Split Fare. They can enter the names of those they are splitting with and they will receive a notification to accept before the ride is up. At the moment, Uber is only available in two cities in Nigeria – Abuja, and Lagos.
Jekalo
Jekalo was launched in 2015 by Bolarinwa Motoni. It is an online platform that allows users to share a ride with someone going along the same route as they. The app serves two kinds of people; the riders and the car owners.
Car owners who want to offer rides get scrutinized and published on the jekalo admin, so they can receive and accept rides. Riders, on the other hand, can order for a ride by entering their trip information to find rides that match their route. In cases where no ride matches their route, they can choose to get notified when one finally does.
Conclusion
Having already changed the transport game, offering affordable and more convenient options for renting and owning vehicles, ride-hailing has a bright future. However, there are some problems that militate against it.
Most of the problems can be addressed by using blockchain technology. In the future, blockchain may be fused with ride-hailing technology to ensure greater screening measures of drivers and higher security standards for drivers.