Justdial to ring in cab-hailing service

The cab-hailing segment is set to get more competitive with Justdial planning to launch a taxi service to compete with the likes of Uber and Ola.

Justdial, which is currently a local business listing website, will start a pilot in Bengaluru next month by aggregating over 5,000 cabs. The BSE-200 listed company will then extend the service across major cities during this year.

App created According to sources close to the development, the company has already created an app to tap the burgeoning and highly unorganised Indian cab-booking services market estimated at around $7-9 billion. There only a handful of organised players such as Meru, Ola, TaxiForSure, Tabcab and Uber.

However, it is not clear what business model Justdial will adopt for the new venture. Existing players operate under two business models. While companies such as Meru and TabCab own their fleet, Ola and Uber are taxi aggregators.

Though the company was not reachable for a comment, Justdial’s founder VSS Mani had told analysts last year that it would soon allow its users to book all types of cabs.

Lately, Justdial has been facing stiff competition in Mumbai from other apps for shopping or product/service search.

In 2014-15, its revenue came in at ₹589 crore against ₹461 crore in 2013-14, and the net profit stood at ₹138 crore (₹120 crore in FY14).

The market cap of the company is ₹12,000 crore and it has 15 million users.

Recently, Tiger Global Four JD Holdings and Tiger Global Five Indian Holdings exited the company by selling their stake on the stock market.

On Friday, Justdial shares ended 1.44 per cent lower, at ₹1098.95, on the BSE.