KOCHI: The Cochin International Airport Limited (CIAL) top management has given the green signal for launching the mobile app platform for its taxis so as to take on the tough competition from the mobile apps like Uber and Ola. Currently the CIAL taxi operators loss a lot of jobs to Uber and Ola as those going into and coming out of the Cochin airport increasingly depend on the online taxis to reach destinations within the city at much cheaper rates. The idea behind the airport online taxi service is to be as competitive as any other online taxi service by charging the cost for one direction and finding the return passenger on its own.
“Already the taxi service in CIAL are connected through GPS and much efforts won’t be needed to launch the service. We will soon tender to find an agency for creating the software for the mobile app. We are confident that the taxis will be able to find return passenger once they drop someone from the airport to a destination. The taxi operators and the CIAL Taxi Service Society are keen on launching such an app. In any case they will operate return services only to the airport and we will review the situation after launch and decide on any deliverable,” said a CIAL official.
Currently there are altogether 604 taxi operators at CIAL who lost their homes during land acquisition for the airport. “In the next phase we will consider those who surrendered land for CIAL for granting taxi permits,” said the official. He added that the CIAL Taxi Service Society has an approximate turnover of Rs 35- Rs 40 crore a year while one operator clocks in Rs 75,000 on an average every month.
