Until recently, ride-hailing apps were not available in Cote D’Ivoire or many other African countries. When Parfait Ouattara watched how Uber, the American transportation company, caught the globe by storm, he vowed to emulate it in his native country.
He began working on the app alongside his two other brothers, Issa Sidibé and Pete Angel, as co-founders in 2011. They established TaxiJet in 2015, styled like Uber but with certain differences to ensure subscribers profit more.
In other words, TaxiJet local taxis can still pick up their own customers in addition to TaxiJet customers received through the app. According to Market Frontiers, the taxi company has over 10,000 users and over 100 bookings every day by 2017.
Furthermore, drivers who sign up for the platform are given a smartphone with the app already installed, allowing them to begin driving for TaxiJet immediately, paying the company a 10% commission on each fare and keeping the rest.
According to Ouattara, who also serves as the startup’s CEO, he and his team were inspired by a desire to provide a safer, more dependable transportation experience for clients by utilizing the rising availability of smartphones in his home country.
“People were not feeling secure using a taxi. Most of the time, [customers] can be waiting 15-30 mins, one hour because you don’t have a taxi,” he told CNN. “We created TaxiJet to help the drivers know exactly where the customers are, and for the customers to know where the driver is.”
TaxiJet also teaches drivers how to behave professionally, including how to obey traffic regulations and treat clients and their surroundings with respect. The goal is to make the ride-hailing app more appealing to investors as well as customers.
“We are helping [drivers] to increase their revenue and reduce the amount of time they are empty. It’s a very different business model [than Uber or Lyft], so we are not controversial,” said Sidibe in an interview with the BBC.
According to France24, when Taxijet debuted in 2015, the city of Abidjan had roughly 2 million residents, with 12,000 taxis serving 300,000 consumers daily. To fill the void, Taxijet was introduced.
In a 2017 interview, Ouattara stated that TaxiJet intends to possess 10% of the market in Cote D’Ivoire by 2022 and to extend to adjacent West African countries such as America and Europe.
Ouattara and his crew take satisfaction in creating the Uber of Francophone Africa. Taxijet was, in fact, the first app of its sort in Abidjan when it was launched.