11th June 2020: BookMycab Car Rental received approval from the Pune police for the city’s domestic airport pick and drop service along with other regions in Pune. The company has gone digital and launched a World class app, Book2Ride to make the process easy for travellers along with the taxi and rickshaw drivers. The approval has been received from Surendranath Deshmukh, Assistant Commissioner, Traffic Police Department. The application Book2Ride is available for download on IOS and Android phones and is backed by a 24 x 7 call center 020-66100100. This simple one tap booking app is a “Make In India” initiative which will try and ease the stress of Punekars during this global pandemic where commuting To and Fro within the city is currently challenging. There will be no surge pricing for the users and the riders will be charged a flat rate of Rs. 18 per km for the taxis and the night tariff would be just 25 % higher than the standard tariff.
The current fleet size available in phase one is around 250 plus vehicles, which includes a combination of both rickshaws and cars. The second phase will have around 1000 plus vehicles added as per the bookings. The company would be giving an equal opportunity to ladies and LGBT community drivers to be a part of this service.
This app will be used by the cab and auto-rickshaw drivers to receive the bookings. Customers can download the app on their smart phones and use this service. The app provides “Go-home” option for the drivers and remote area access where the vehicle will always have a pick up and will never ply empty. Another feature is the drivers directly get paid by the customer as per the fare meter and not through any booking agency where they driver fears deductions like service charges, higher percentage commissions etc. For the customers, the app has safety features with panic alerts and emergency number.,The vehicles are sanitized after every trip and drivers will wear masks and hand gloves. Sanitizers would be available in the vehicles and social distancing norms would be followed.
Kunal Kharat, Founder, Book2Ride says, “We are always ready to serve India. Our vision is to be a trusted travel partner enabling secure and safe travel within the city. This service am sure would be a big relief considering the domestic flights have resumed. Corona has created havoc and we thought of launching the first phase of our service where customers could commute using the app and elderly people could call the helpline no and request for the cab. We are also working on developing an AI based algorithm to maximize the benefits to the driver.”