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Hailo: The Taxi App backed by Richard Branson that’s winning back work for the world’s cabbies

Hailing a cab in the 21st century?

Just tap your smartphone. No more arms flailing whilst standing on a soggy pavement preying one will whizz the round the corner in any minute.

Russell Hall, a taxi driver for 30 years and founder of taxi app Hailo explains how he’s revolutionized the industry.

It all started in a café on Cranbourn Street, Soho. Myself and two other driver friends would sit and chat for hours over countless cups of tea about how the industry desperately needed to bring itself up to date.

We enlisted the help of three technology entrepreneurs and just ran with it. Many thought we were balmy. Today, the app is operating in 13 cities with 42,000 drivers signed to the service. In London alone, three million UK customer journeys have been completed since launch.

It’s safe to say that the fact that a Hailo hail is accepted around the world every four seconds still astounds us.

Hailo has not only made hailing a taxi more straightforward but also helped drivers scouring the streets of London become far more efficient. Cabbies spend up to 50% of their time with the light on scouting for more work. Hailo eradicates this “dead mileage” by finding them passengers within minutes.

With two thirds of London’s 16,000 black cab drivers signed up to the free service, Hailo has had a hugely positive effect on the industry in just two years. Helping London’s cabbies claim back their work from the minicab trade has always been our focus, and will continue to be so.

Since launching in 2011, the company has raised over $50M from the best investors anywhere, including Union Square Ventures, Accel Partners, Wellington Partners, Atomico Ventures, Sir Richard Branson, and Janice, our CEO’s mother.

This A-star list have already backed technology’s biggest names: Facebook, Twitter, Skype and Spotify.

So where next for Hailo? We continue to expand aggressively around the world and already have fleets in New York, Boston, Toronto, Dublin and Madrid, to name but a few. Two weeks ago we launched in Osaka and are currently looking into other cities in Asia as well as Europe’s major capitals.

This expansion comes from our central belief that everybody should be just a few taps away from their nearest taxi wherever they are in the world. From the days of seeing away cups of tea in Cranbourn Street to today, that belief has never faltered.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Hailo .