How to Start an App Like Uber for Your Business Startup?

by Paresh Sagar Delivering Market Leading Digital Solutions

Who runs the world? Perhaps the Illuminati or the Rothschild Family, but we are not here to prove or debunk any conspiracy theories. By helping people from more than 107 countries to get where they want to reach, the company that runs the world is Uber.

If you wish to know how to start an app like uber and make your own taxi app startup, you are reading the right blog. Here we will be clearing all the doubts that you have about starting your own on-demand taxi app company.

Get clear answers to questions like:

lWhat features should you have in a taxi app?

lWhat is the cost to build an app like Uber?

lWhich app platform to launch your taxi app?

lWhere to find the best taxi app developers?

Facts to fuel your excitement

To fuel your enthusiasm and show you the potential of this industry, here are a few trending facts:

lThe total valuation of the ride-hailing industry worldwide is $82.5 billion in 2019.

lUber earned a revenue of $11.3 billion in the year 2018.

lCareem (UAE based taxi business startup) & Grab come 2nd to Uber in the most number of active countries.

What app features you need to have in your taxi app?

No more time to waste. Let’s get straight to the point on how you can create your own taxi app business. Let’s begin with listing out the must-have features in your on-demand taxi app.

Must-Have App Features for Your Passenger App

It is one of the most important modules of your app development project. It's the app through which your potential customers will directly access your services. Make sure that the UI and UX of the app are flawless and interesting enough to make the users use it again and again.

Now coming to the app features for your passenger app, you will need to have:

Registration/Login Screen: This is the first screen that your app users will see and interact with. For the first time users, this will be a registration screen to feed in basic info while for existing users this will be their login screen.

Home Screen: A home screen will be where the passenger will book their ride from and go to any other app screen. Your customers will feed in the pickup and drop location in this screen, and then the app will show the nearest cabs available.

Push Notifications: With push notifications and messaging available to the app, the customer can receive an update about their ride’s ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival), delay message, or any other notification for their ride.

Real-Time Map: The passengers can view where their ride is at a given time on the map. This way, they get the exact idea of when to be ready for the ride, and there is no way the driver can give a false ETA.

Multi-Payment Option: By offering various options in paying for the ride, you make it easy and secure for the passengers to travel and increase their chances of using your app again. You can give payment options like cash, card (debit/credit), in-app wallet, net banking, etc.

Review & Rating: The passengers can rate their ride experience and how well the driver treated them so that future riders can get the best experience based on these reviews.

Schedule Ride: It is difficult to get an available cab in rush hour, so with this app feature the passengers can book their ride in advance for the rush hour.

Must-Have App Features for Your Driver App

This app is the second half of your app development process. This app is for the drivers to enroll in your taxi app company and ride under your banner.

Registration/Login Screen: Just like the passenger app, the drivers will also get the first screen to register themselves the first time, and then a login screen from there on.

Driver Profile: The drivers will create their profile for your company, which will be shown to the admin and the customers. This profile will have the necessary information about the driver like name, contact number, make and model of the car, and car’s number plate info.

Driver Status: With this feature, the drivers will get an On/Off Status button in the app. If the driver is unavailable due to any reason, then they can click Off button so that their ride won’t be shown on the map.

Push Notifications: Push notifications are equally useful for the drivers just as for the passengers. With this app feature, the drivers will get ride alerts and accept or decline ride requests from the passengers. They also get additional ride information and payment status message as app notification.

Map Navigation: When the driver accepts the ride request, he will get a map route to the pickup point and then from there a route in the app to the drop location. This feature is possible due to the in-app map navigation feature.

Ride Reports: The driver can access records of their rides (past, current, and future bookings) at any time from the app. This way, drivers can keep tally of their daily rides and the work done via the app.

Build Your Own Admin Dashboard

The admin dashboard will help you monitor and control every aspect of your taxi business from a single place. You can access this dashboard from any device (Smartphone, Desktop, Tablet) at any time from any place.

You can control the profiles of all the stakeholders like drivers, passengers, and other admins. You can also place sub-admins under you to operate the business and provide them with access as per their roles and responsibilities.

Creating a fully functional admin dashboard is the most challenging yet beneficial module of digitizing your taxi business.

What is the Cost to Build an App Like Uber?

The cost of building an app like Uber depends a lot on the various types of app features that you add and the complexity of UX and UI of your taxi app. So before giving an estimate on the app development cost, you need to understand the development process.

If you are building a taxi app with only the basic app features and a decent design, then the budget would be easy on your pocket, but remember that your app won’t be in any way extraordinary and good enough to become the best one in the market.

On the other hand as you improve the app to more advanced features like, in-app calling to driver, vehicle selection, ride fare splitting, booking waitlist, etc. and bring in a very cool and useful app UI/UX design, the budget could be tough on your pocket but consider it an investment that will definitely pay out in the long run.

Now coming to an estimation of the taxi app development cost, it can range anywhere between $5000 (for an MVP) to $30,000 (for a fully functional app). If your goal is to create an app equal to if not better than Uber, then the cost would be between $50,000 to $100,000 as you increase the quality of the app.

Conclusion

The prices mentioned here are an estimation for any of the app platform; Android or iOS. If you go with a development company from the US, UK, or any other country from the western hemisphere, the app development cost will increase drastically. While choosing the best app development company from India would ensure the best developers at a reasonable rate.