Taxi Driver Online

Former Uber driver launches new ride-sharing app in London which shares all its profits with members

https://www.taxi-point.co.uk/single-pos ... th-members

3 Sep 2019

Michael Murphy

A former Uber driver is aiming to shake off the industry's bad reputation of inflexible working hours and poor payment conditions for drivers across London.

Karjoin is a neo-capitalist ride-hailing app which shares all its profits with its members to provide both sustainable and economic benefit to both its riders and drivers.

David Salem, founder, and CEO of the socio-economic ride-hailing app suggests that its USP is in its fairness as well as equality in how it treats its drivers.

He saw first hand how minicab drivers and others would be paid just £4 an hour and have to work double hours to earn a minimum wage. This isn’t enough to live on let alone pay mortgage payments or household bills.

In comparison, registered drivers through Karjoin will receive a share of 40% profit and their working hours will be reduced by 50% by fighting monopoly in the industry.

The riders will share an 8% profit because the founder believes “the definition of loyalty has shifted to a common interest”.

‘In today’s economic climate where margins are constantly being squeezed it is important to remember that a business needs to be sustainable to grow’.

David quotes UBER’S self driverless vehicle initiative as a way in which an entire workforce could be wiped out overnight and questions how ethical its approach is towards its drivers in long term and in its dominance for an enhanced customer experience.

To date, Karjoin has grown to be awarded the PCO operating license by TfL which enables Karjoin hailing app to operate across London.

The app launched in May 2018 and is available for IOS and Android. Karjoin aims to deliver a healthier, safer and more proactive work-life balance for its members.

"Neo-capitalist/socio-economic ride-sharing app" sounds suspiciously like what used to be called a taxi co-op

See you can do sub-editing.

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IDFIMH

I wish him well, but to get punters you need to be competitive with the likes of Uber, and have sufficient cars to offer a reasonable service.

Punters wont give a flying f*** about your "Neo-capitalist/sociol-economic" ethos, they just want to go from A to B without paying fortunes and not having to wait forever for their car.

That said all the time Uber allow drivers using the Uber app to have multi other apps, then it should be easy to attract drivers as they have nothing to lose.

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IDFIMH

Funnily enough, I actually 'subbed' TaxiPoint's headline, because their 'sub' dropped a minor clanger

The headline originally read:

Former Uber driver launches new ride-sharing app in London which shares all it's profits with members

"It's" is short for "'it is", so "shares all it is profits with members" doesn't quite work.

Note that the last line of the article actually uses "its" properly:

As has been said before,

Another day, another App!!!

A despatch operation never the most difficult business to set up, but back when I started in the trade at the very least it would entail someone manning the phone for maybe 18 hours a day minimum.

Then the mobile phones explosion, and every man and his dog had a number, while previously most of the despatch operations around here would have around 10 cars or so.

But before the mobiles there was an obvious distinction between cars doing despatch work and the 'independents'.

But gradually the distinction disappeared, and you could find any number of cars operating under a phone number, from the bigger operations down to the one-man bands with their own cards and telephone number.

Then came the apps, and at first that seemed like something unattainable and confined to Silicon Valley, while now they're threatening to become a bit closer to what mobile phones were maybe 20 years ago.

And perhaps the difference with the apps is that initially they've been associated with people not really part of the trade in the more conventional sense, Uber being the most obvious example.

And to a degree that distinction has increasingly disappeared too, as more conventional firms got their own app, and apps became more accessible to smaller operations.

(Like the mobile phone thing I suspect smaller ops with apps will be less common in the big cities than in the smaller towns/rural locations - while true independents here have more or less disappeared because everyone has their own number, in the likes of Dundee there are still significant numbers (where they're called 'streetcars').

Suspect the reason for that is because in a small town you can hand out cards and advertise, and you're only ever half a mile or so away from someone who's phoning you. In the cities, on the other hand, if you handed out cards willy nilly and advertised your number in the press, you'd be getting hiked all over the place to do silly little jobs which wouldn't be worth your while. So better to stick to the ranks, or work with a big circuit.)

Another benefit of working the ranks in a small town is that it gives you plenty of time to post nonsense on the internet

How competitive you need to be is the bit that's always subjective. A lot of HCs around here do work for one of the local PH ops when they're not on the rank and use their fare sheet, which is lower than meter pricing, but not awful.

The way I look at it is that the punter isn't going to pay HC fares if they've had to call to get you to come to them, otherwise they'd just have phoned for a PH instead. It's why I laugh at the HC apps that keep popping up, nobody is going to pay the premium over using a PH app. Back when I was going out as an 18 year old the only time we'd ever call the black cab company was when we had 5 people and didn't want to pay for 2 PHs. Then going home you'd either choose the unknown wait for a PH or try and flag down a HC.

Friday and Saturday nights are the bread and butter of my rank work, if I didn't have a school contract then I'd likely work the station rank in the morning, but I prefer the guaranteed income. Outside of that tho I'm waiting for jobs on my PH set, I'd rather be sat on the sofa waiting for a job than sat on the rank when its quiet. Frankly it's why I'm interested in an "uber-like" service that could work for HCs (ie no surge pricing that would put the fare over the meter rate), I'd rather pay a set commission per job to supplement my rank work than a weekly fee for a set.

this app will find itself at odds with the market place you cannot be both competitive on pricing and fair to the drivers unless every driver on the likes of uber,lyft etc unanimously left and joined it and removed the competitive element at a stroke

and the odds of that happening are astronomical

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector