About Us - taxiGUIDE.in Team
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The Concept
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taxiGUIDE.in is an online car rental booking service which brings together car rental
operators and retail customers on one platform. As a car rental aggregator, taxiGUIDE.in
enables hassle free booking and short notice service for a customer. A customer
will henceforth not have to call multiple operators for order fulfilment. He/she
will make an informed choice with back up options in place.
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Founding Team:
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taxiGUIDE.in has been set up by a team of first generation entrepreneurs with 36
man years of experience in Management Consulting, Corporate Banking and Information
Technology.
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Ashok Ananthakrishnan (BE- Mech, PGDBA and CFA) has an experience of over 11 years
at S.B.Billimoria and Co, Vertebrand Management Consulting, ICICI Bank and DBS Bank.
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Subash Bidare (B.Com, PGDBA) has over 12 years of experience at Quality Research
Group, Vertebrand Management Consulting, MTI Consulting and Kaati Zone.
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Shashibushan Venkatasubbaiah
(BE, MS Comp Sc.) has over 13 years of experience building software products and
managing multi-disciplinary teams at Honeywell, McAfee and Phonenix Technologies.
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Subash, Shashi and Ashok are avid trekkers with a keen interest in travel. They
believe taxiGUIDE.in will make it easy for fellow travellers to book car rental
services across India.
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taxiGUIDE.in benefits
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Obtaining a directory of operators to begin the search process
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List of reputed and organised operators available online
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Repeated phone calls to determine vehicle availability
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Vehicle availability is online and dynamic
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Apprehension regarding the antecedents of the operator
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Due diligence to enlist reputed operators
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No facility to book online or call one number for a booking across cities
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Enables booking across cities online. Customer care number to understand requirements
also in place
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Board of Advisors
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Dr Srinivasan Ramani
Dr Srinivasan Ramani earned his PhD at IIT Bombay. He has worked at the Tata Institute
of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Bombay, and as a researcher at the Carnegie-Mellon
University. He left the TIFR where he was Associate Director, National Centre for
Software Development and Computing Techniques (NCSDCT) in 1985, and went on to serve
as the founding director of the National Centre for Software Technology (NCST).
While at NCST, he played a key role in creating India’s academic network ERNET that
brought the Internet to India. He came to Bangalore as the first director of Hewlett
Packard Labs India in 2001. He has served as a member of the Expert Panel of Advisors
of the United Nation’s Task Force on ICT for Development. He has also served as
Chairman of the Computer Society of India and as Chairman of the International Council
for Computer Communication. He retired from HP Labs in 2007 and moved on to the
International Institute of Information Technology, where he serves as a professor
now.
On why Dr Ramani agreed to be on the Board of taxiGUIDE.in (in his own words)
"Transportation is an area which requires urgent attention in India. Considerable
increase in efficiency can be achieved in our economy by innovative use of IT to
make access to transport services fast and efficient. We should not be wasting people’s
time when a two minute call would suffice! I have been impressed by the knowledge
and enthusiasm of the TaxiGuide team, and am betting that they will make a difference"
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The Story behind taxiGUIDE.in:
In Dec 09, one of the founders was planning a pilgrimage to the holy shrine of Vaishno
Devi. Since his aged in-laws were accompanying him for this trip, he was keen on
ensuring that the logistics/read car rental for the travel from Jammu to Katra and
back was booked and confirmed well in advance. To his amazement and disappointment,
the founder discovered that none of the online travel agents in India offered such
an online car rental booking facility across the country. While customers could
book a flight ticket, train ticket and even a bus ticket online, they did not have
the convenience of booking a car rental service online.
Back home, his wife who was dependent on radio taxis for her daily commute to and
fro office was confronting another problem. Despite being a regular user of the
radio taxi service, none of the operators offered a monthly scheme for pick and
drop. The radio taxi operators did not have any CRM in place forcing her to call
the cab companies every day for a pick up and drop. On most occasions availability
of cabs had to be determined by making a series of phone calls (sometimes 10 or
more) to every operator in the vicinity. Her constant nagging to figure out a solution
and the need to pick up/drop her to office in case of non availability of a taxi
were the early triggers for the genesis of taxiguide.in.
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