Leaving out major players like Snapp, Tap30 and Carpino, there are over two dozen ride-hailing services in Iran with observers saying that the market is reaching saturation point.
According to the Tehran Taxi Organization, two of the services are backed by TTO, namely Carpino and Cab-In.
Some of the other online taxi services are iTaxi, Touchsi, Cheetax, Taxi-Ma, Qonqa, netC, Aac Taxi, Atlastaxi, Zod Taxi, U-Cab, Spin Taxi, Ride Net, Pingo Taxi, Itakk, Cab30, Carzinn, Savar, Foriro, Dash-Taxi, Carma, Shetab Taxi, Dinnng, Ajancy and Spintaxi.
Even the Russian ride-hailing service Maxim is set to enter the domestic market. The growing number of firms offering online taxi services has left many wondering about how many ride-hailing services one country needs.
One of the basic elements of the business that many of these firms fail to notice is that simply copying a business that is doing well does not necessarily guarantee favorable results or the anticipated success.
Seemingly the newcomers look at the big players’ growth numbers oblivious to the open secret that the two firms with the largest share of the market (Snapp and Tap30) are backed by local and even global companies.
Snapp last year received almost 900 billion rials ($24 million) in investments from MTN — South African mobile operator which is present in Iran under the brand name MTN-Irancell.
In October 2017, local media reported that Bank Melli Iran, owned by the government and the largest commercial bank in the country, had bought a 25% stake in TAP30 for 800 billion rials ($20 million).
>Congested Roads
A shared promise of ride-hailing companies has been fewer cars clogging city streets. However studies from US-based institutes indicate that these firms in addition to failing to deliver on their pledge have worsened the traffic conditions in most metropolises they operate.
According to the studies, online taxi services are pulling riders off buses, subways, bicycles and their own feet and putting them in cars instead.
A professor of computer science at Boston’s Northeastern University, Christo Wilson, is of the opinion that the impact of all those cars is becoming clear. Wilson has conducted a research on Uber’s activities.
He told the Associated Press earlier this week that the emerging consensus is that ride-hailing is increasing congestion.
One study included surveys of 944 ride-hailing users over four weeks in late 2017 in the Boston area. Nearly six in 10 said they would have used public transportation, walked, biked or skipped the trip if the ride-hailing apps were not available. The report also found many riders are not using hailed rides to connect to a subway or bus line, but instead as a separate mode of transit.
A study released in December found that large increases in the number of taxis and ride-hailing vehicles are contributing to slow traffic in Manhattan’s central business district. It recommended policies to prevent further increases in “the number of vacant vehicles occupied only by drivers waiting for their next trip request.”
In San Francisco, a study released in June found that on a typical weekday, ride-hailing drivers make more than 170,000 vehicle trips, about 12 times the number of taxi trips and that the trips are concentrated in the densest and most congested parts of the city.
In Iran, the leading ride-hailing service Snapp reports that it has over 10 million registered users and 300,000 plus drivers work for it. The company operates in 18 cities and says on a daily basis it receives over 1 million trip requests of which at least 800,000 are processed positively.
Snapp’s major rival, Tap30, is yet to release similar statistics, however, it is speculated that the Tap30’s share in the market is close to Snapp.
While the state of public transportation services defers wildly in Iran with what is offered in the US, considering the recent findings and the growing number of people relying on such services in major Iranian urban areas for their daily commute, it would help if academic centers and think tanks in Iran also undertake such studies. May be they could come up with some other results that would send the right message to the ride-hailing industry and its proponents and opponents.
