Friday 10 June 2016

Kenya's Safaricom to launch Uber rival, Littlecabs

Uber Ken 

East Africa’s biggest telecom firm Safaricom has announced they will launch a ride-hailing company as its seeks new sources of revenue.

Safaricom is joining up with a local software firm Craft Silicon to launch the app that will rival multinational online transportation firm, Uber.

Speaking to Reuters, the telecoms CEO Bob Collymore said they will launch the app called Littlecabs in the next three weeks.

It's effectively a rival for Uber. Easy taxi closed down when Uber came in and what the guys in Craft Silicon did is they came and said look we think we can do this cheaper than Uber.

“It’s effectively a rival for Uber. Easy taxi closed down when Uber came in and what the guys in Craft Silicon did is they came and said look we think we can do this cheaper than Uber. We think we can pay our drivers better than Uber. We think we can put Wi-Fi into the cars. We think we can give you some choices like before when you book your car, you can tell the car which radio station you want in the car,” said Collymore.

Safaricom will aid develop the application as well as offer the network connectivity for vehicles that will be signed up on Littlecabs. Passengers will pay for their rides using Safaricom’s mobile-phone based financial service M-Pesa.

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