TrueCaller data insights tell a tale of how cab hailing services still have room to grow

While app-based ride sharing services in India are pretty famous, TrueCaller has come up with data that sheds some light on the topic. And as it turns out, the insights are interesting.

TrueCaller’s data comes from the stuff that is already available with them, with some help from engineers, data scientists and marketers. The results of the study reveal that of the 684 million phone users in India, 205 million smartphone users are booking cabs while ‘on the move’.

While many may think that the most of those 205 million smartphone users call for an Ola or an Uber, turns out a majority of users prefer getting a cab on the street, or calling a local cab vendor instead of the former.

The data from from January 1 to April 17 points out that Indian smartphone owners made and received 2.49 billion call to a cab service. And from those, Ola took up just 4.1 percent with a 102 million calls, while Uber took up a mere 1.6 percent with 13.6 million calls. Add to this Easy Cabs that gets 0.4 percent with 9.3 million calls and there’s almost a spare 1.2 billion (yes, that’s a billion) calls going to taxi and cab vendors and another 1.14 billion calls from other driving services that can still be tapped into.

As Truecaller points out in its blog post , “these new app-based services are still just a drop in the bigger ocean that is the Indian taxi industry. Even if the market keeps growing at anywhere near the pace it currently is, then there is abundant room for more than one service to operate.”

At the same time local taxis have not given up yet. However, the battle for riders is only going to get more competitive when more services come on board.