Cost to build an Uber like application is far less than you think
Business owners and investors are always looking for good opportunities in the IT sector. Business’ that are looking to build Uber like Taxi application can get the applications developed at much lower rate than they assume. How much money did Uber spend to develop the application? The basic idea behind building the Uber mobile application was to connect passengers with drivers. The company took the advantage of features present in the smartphones like GPS navigation system and mobile internet. 
As the new technology driven business to arise, the traditional business had to suffer. This is what has happened with the NYC Yellow cab drivers. The Yellow Cab business in New York City has slowed down with the advent of Uber. More and more Yellow cab drivers are now becoming Uber drivers. Riders are benefited by a cost-effective technology driven solution for their daily commute. Uber was launched in the year 2011 when they had a whooping fund of $1.5 million. So, it can be assumed that it took $1 to 1.5 million to develop Uber application. Uber has since then raised $15billion to expand its operations across the world. Most of the money has been spent in solving legal issues rather than the application development.
A good news for startups in the taxi business As a new business person, you don’t have to compete with the already existing cab system in the way Uber did. The hard work related to getting the business through from the legal hassles has already been done. The developers who have the experience of building applications like Uber can be easily found. It will be relatively difficult to compete with the scale of the business that Uber is involved in. For new taxi business to survive is that they must target a small section of people with limited services. A market study can be very helpful in this regards. The market study of Yandex taxi of Russia elaborates this point. A few years ago, the Russia had very limited taxi companies each of which provided their own services. Yandex saw this as a problem and solved it by partnering with these taxi companies, unlike Uber which hires drivers as contractors. As it is a local Russian company they did not face any legal issues to run the business.
Features of an Uber like application There are two applications in Uber each for driver and rider. Let’s look at the actions that are required to be performed by each one of those.
Rider side application: • To get onboard as a user the user should fill signup/login information • Send a request for the ride based on the start and end of the journey • Payment using a payment gateway
Driver side application: • Signup/Login as a driver • Receive request for rides • Accept or decline requests • Navigate to start and end points • Start and end trips and receive payments After you are done with deciding the business logic, the next step is to hire developers that are expert in developing cross platform applications using the latest technologies. Having an in-house development team is always useful if you want to make it big. The cost involved in developing the applications is much less than you think but to build a rich user experience is very difficult. The next major challenge is to expand the scale of the application. If you cannot innovate and target a niche audience your all efforts to make the business big will fail. To manage this strategy, you will need to have an expert development and business team to do the work for you.
As the new technology driven business to arise, the traditional business had to suffer. This is what has happened with the NYC Yellow cab drivers. The Yellow Cab business in New York City has slowed down with the advent of Uber. More and more Yellow cab drivers are now becoming Uber drivers. Riders are benefited by a cost-effective technology driven solution for their daily commute. Uber was launched in the year 2011 when they had a whooping fund of $1.5 million. So, it can be assumed that it took $1 to 1.5 million to develop Uber application. Uber has since then raised $15billion to expand its operations across the world. Most of the money has been spent in solving legal issues rather than the application development. A good news for startups in the taxi business As a new business person, you don’t have to compete with the already existing cab system in the way Uber did. The hard work related to getting the business through from the legal hassles has already been done. The developers who have the experience of building applications like Uber can be easily found. It will be relatively difficult to compete with the scale of the business that Uber is involved in. For new taxi business to survive is that they must target a small section of people with limited services. A market study can be very helpful in this regards. The market study of Yandex taxi of Russia elaborates this point. A few years ago, the Russia had very limited taxi companies each of which provided their own services. Yandex saw this as a problem and solved it by partnering with these taxi companies, unlike Uber which hires drivers as contractors. As it is a local Russian company they did not face any legal issues to run the business.
Features of an Uber like application There are two applications in Uber each for driver and rider. Let’s look at the actions that are required to be performed by each one of those.
Rider side application: • To get onboard as a user the user should fill signup/login information • Send a request for the ride based on the start and end of the journey • Payment using a payment gateway
Driver side application: • Signup/Login as a driver • Receive request for rides • Accept or decline requests • Navigate to start and end points • Start and end trips and receive payments After you are done with deciding the business logic, the next step is to hire developers that are expert in developing cross platform applications using the latest technologies. Having an in-house development team is always useful if you want to make it big. The cost involved in developing the applications is much less than you think but to build a rich user experience is very difficult. The next major challenge is to expand the scale of the application. If you cannot innovate and target a niche audience your all efforts to make the business big will fail. To manage this strategy, you will need to have an expert development and business team to do the work for you.
Pritesh
Pritesh Pethani
