Startup Circle- How Cab Bazar is disrupting outstation travel segment leveraging technology to connect riders making one-way fare outstation cab feasible

Cab Bazar is online cab aggregator for intercity travel connecting cabs to travelers and offers better connectivity to Tier II and Tier III cities. Incepted back in 2017,Cab Bazar was born out with an aim to provide comfort, ease of booking and a hassle-free enjoyable journey at a competitive price through a fully-automated system, personalised feedback, partner (taxi provider) follow-up and control, and zero payment hold for partners.

The platform follows an aggregator model, much like Ola and Uber with a vision to be the most most trusted platform for outstation taxis for travelers and taxi providers throughout India, Cab Bazar  is providing both  inter & intra city One-way drops and round trips in Pan India (25 states & 5 UTs).

Rishabh Gupta, a BTech graduate from ITM University who was always fascinated with the scope of the outstation taxi business started and which led his to start "Cab Bazar". Prior to this, he was busy understanding the nuances of setting up the distribution channel of E-commerce and its howabouts.

Speaking to CIOL, Rishabh Gupta, Founder & CMO- Cab Bazar, has shared his views on how Cab Bazar  is providing both  inter & intra city One-way drops and round trips in Pan India. He talked about his startup journey and also, and he speaks about the growth plans he has for Cab Bazar.

Tell us about CabBazar and your offerings. Tell us about the team.

CabBazar is a cab aggregator platform for inter-city travel. It offers most reliable and affordable outstation taxi service to address customer's various mobility requirements like Round trip, One way trip, Car rentals for local sightseeing, Full day car rental and Airport transfers.

Team:

Co-Founders:

Amit Dhall: Head, Technology 20+ years experience from taking product, applications and platforms from concept to scale in Infosys, HCL and IBM

Rishabh Gupta: Head, Operations Engineer, experience in family business. He handles the daily operations, vendor, driver management, and marketing

Deepanshu Rustagi: Head, Mobile App Experience in Android, iOS, React native app development. He handles the development and user experience for mobile app

CabBazar currently consists of a team of 40 highly motivated professionals.

The pandemic has affected the mobility industry heavily. Where does CabBazar stand today?

For the first 2 months of pandemic with complete lockdown, CabBazar operations were completely halted, but CabBazar was the first to restart operations at that time as we realized that it was the time when people actually need outstation taxi as they were stuck at places and taxi is relatively much safer way to travel rather than Air, train or bus travel. So, basically outstation taxi demand was intact, only the travel category was changed. So, we adapted to it and shifted the focus to One-way trip, aligned marketing, operations, prices, support everything to promote and support One-way travels which was the need of the hour.

It worked for as an miracle for CabBazar and resulted in a record growth of 4x in revenue from FY19-20 to FY20-21. At the same time, CabBazar was able to help a large number of people with a safe mode of travel when the options were very limited and simultaneously enabled many drivers to earn and survive the financial crisis.

What are the services that CabBazar is providing?

CabBazar is providing all kinds of inter-city taxi services to customers. It provide cab for Round trip, One way trip, Car rentals for local sightseeing, Full-day car rental, Airport transfers. It also provides all type of cars from small hatchback, sedan, SUV, Innova to tempo-traveller. CabBazar is operational in PAN India and its significant percentage of service comes from trips from T2 to T3 cities.

What sets you apart from your competitors?

A fully automated tech platform, very affordable pricing almost 20% lower compare to its peers, quality service, and its ease of use and transparency for drivers and its riders

Five unique things about your startup that people should know?

Value For Money - prices are 20% lower than competitors, no return fare for one way drop.

Transparency - driver and customer details are exchanged within few minutes of booking. No need to wait till last hour.

Easy Payment - Low advance payment for customers. Immediate settlement (Zero credit) for drivers.

PAN India operations

Ease of use - simple pricing and easy to book for customer. Very easy to use for drivers, just check price and accept booking. No billing management and overheads.

How has your revenue grown with brand evolving during pandemic?

Revenue has grown 4x from FY19-20 to FY20-21, 1.6x from FY20-21 to FY21-22 and is about to close at 2x from FY21-22 to FY22-23.

What has 2022 changed for you? How are things now?

In 2022, we focused on growth and brand building. We have expanded operations in T2 and T3 cities, the full day car rental  / local sightseeing taxi services is expanded to 100 cities. We are currently serving 10K trips per month and have 40K+ drivers on our platform.

What are your growth priorities for 2023?

We are targeting 2x growth in 2023. The plan is to increase brand awareness, grow business significantly in T2 and T3 cities. We will be adding value added services (VAS) for our drivers as well as riders like on-road legal help, insurance, loan, entertainment during trip etc. We are currently in discussion with potential players in respective fields to partner for same.

Funding

It is bootstrapped except a small Ad against equity deal with a leading publication.