TaxiPark co-founders Rodney Jackson-Cole and Ugochi Ugbomeh have launched a new Taxi booking and place discovery service – Tranzit.

Tranzit retains the original business model of TaxiPark – booking and paying for Taxis, but encourages users to discover new places and things to do around them.

The service will be live for Nigerians on the 1st of August while currently running TaxiPark will be shut down.

We haven’t been given a reason for the closure of TaxiPark but industry sources say the co-founders had a conflict of interest as well as an unbalanced share structure. Rodney cites legal lessons he has learnt in an interview with cp-africa.

Here’s a video explaining the concept of Tranzit.

We’re also not sure what the third co-founder Timi Omai is up to and we’ve reached him for comments.

Tranzit is going to face stiff competition from Rocket’s EasyTaxi. Irokotv Founder Jason Njoku says in a blog post that Rocket and Spark offered to acquire TaxiPark earlier this year. Rodney confirms this in his cp-africa interview where he also says that Tranzit has gone through a first round of funding and will be raising more money soon.

What do you think about Tranzit and EasyTaxi? If you’ve used TaxiPark in the past, tell us how the service was. We hear it was great.

Head of Expansion for EasyTaxi had this to say “In 2011, Easy Taxi started in Brazil to connect taxi drivers and passengers in the best possible way. By now, the app has over 1.5-million downloads and more than 45 000 taxi drivers in the network. We want to bring this success to other attractive markets and we see high potential in many Asian and African countries.”

Yesterday’s round of funding comes from Africa Internet Holding, a joint venture between Rocket Internet and 35% owner, telecoms operator Millicom. This is the same pair that backed Easy Taxi with $15 million in June, through another joint venture, Latin American Internet Holding.

That earlier round is being used to expand Easy Taxi in Latin America. So far, Easy Taxi has amassed 1,500,000 downloads and more than 45,000 taxi drivers in markets where it is active. The service is present in  Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan, Peru, South Korea and Venezuela.

Sacha Poignonnec, co-CEO of AIH, says that after Nigeria, Easy Taxi will go to eight more countries by the end of this year, including Morocco, Egypt, Ivory Coast, Ghana, South Africa, Algeria, Tunisia and Angola.

EasyTaxi’s app is available for iOS, Android and the new BlackBerry devices reaching the smartphone owning middle-class. Smartphone penetration is not up top 50% yet in Nigeria but trends show it’s only a matter of a few years before smartphones become mainstream. Based on this, Poignonnec says that Easy Taxi will likely introduce a basic phoning service, tapping into its existing call center infrastructure that was put in place for its sister site Jumia.

Nigeria already has an online Taxi booking service for Lagos – TaxiPark. Stakeholders will be looking at how TaxiPark holds against new and aggressive tactics from Rocket.

Source: TechCrunch, VentureBurn.

Nigeria’s first online cab booking service, TaxiPark, a source close to the company told us it has added Red Cabs as well as the regular yellow Lagos taxis to its service.

TaxiPark originally had only Metro Taxi in its database. The addition of new companies means users have different options to choose when booking taxis which in turn encourages competitive rates.

The website officially launches tomorrow, 20th December. You can signup here

Also checkout our walkthrough for how to book Taxis using the service.

The first time we saw TaxiPark in March, it was a simple app that let you find cab providers within Lagos and call them. Interactive Shack  then added cab companies in Abuja and mapped directions if you needed. A BlackBerry app was also launched.

In this new iteration of TaxiPark, iShack will allow you do the ultimate task. You will finally be able to book a cab in Lagos via the internet from December 20th.

We’ve been given priority access and we’ll take you through simple steps in booking your cab via TaxiPark when it launches. You can signup on TaxiPark’s website to get a notification when the service launches.

From the landing page, TaxiPark asks for your phone number and email address.

Hitting the continue button leads you to a page where you can allow TaxiPark find your location automatically or you can type your pickup location manually. You then select a drop-off location, pickup day and time and select a cab company. TaxiPark currently has only one option of Metro Taxi for Lagos but they’re looking to add new companies soon. For return trips, you simply tick the button and hit “Book Ride”

After hitting the “Book Ride” button, you’re taken to a page that shows distance  and cost estimates as well as a map for directions. For example a return trip from Massey Street in Surulere to The Palms, Lekki will cost N5,594.  A trip from Co-creation, Yaba hub to the Muson Centre, Onikan costs about N1,200. The page also states that you may be charged for traffic delays. Remember we’re in Lagos and traffic is its synonym.

You can then accept the booking or negotiate the cost by hitting the “Get Exact Cost” button. The cab company will then call you and negotiate the fare. If you’re not satisfied with the cab company’s estimates, you can then cancel the request and try again.

TaxiPark’s booking service is currently only available via its website and Interactive Shack says they’re working towards mobile apps. If you’re on a mobile phone however, the website can still find your location and scale to fit your device’s screen.

How does TaxiPark make money? They sell credits to cab companies at N35 per booking and offer N4,900 per taxi per month for a cloud service that runs fleet management, taxi dispatch and web and mobile booking. Your taxi company can get on board here.

The major issue here is how long it will take a cab to reach you. For cab orders for the future, there should be no problem of arrival time but for immediate orders, the website currently doesn’t state how long it will take cabs to reach.

What do you think about this service? Will you use it?

When TaxiPark launched a few months ago, they didn’t have approval for their BlackBerry app and you could choose cabs by the cab driver closest to you. Now they have a BlackBerry app available, which is better since a lot of people use BlackBerrys in Nigeria.

As for the ability to choose cab driver’s close to you, “That’s what the taxi companies wanted,” said Interactive Shack Founder, Rodney Jackson-Cole. “This made the app a bit dull, but we added a really cool new feature.”

They’ve completely redesigned the app and added ‘Get Directions’ which will, as the name implies, get you directions to wherever it is you’re going. It uses the Google Maps API so will work anywhere. You can check out screenshots below. What do you think of the update? You can get the app here.

I so love it when people solve needs I have. You know all those times when you’re stuck on the road and you need to get a cab and you can’t remember the phone number of one of those private cab companies in Lagos? TaxiPark solves that problem.

Available on the web, mobile and for download on Android and iOS (they’re awaiting approval for a BlackBerry app), TaxiPark allows its users find cabs within local governments in Lagos State. It currently lists the names of drivers, codes and numbers of MetroCab drivers. It hopes to list other private cab services soon.

To use the app all you have to do is select a cab service provider, then select/search your location and pick one of the cab drivers available in your Area. Don’t forget to call them o!

Here are a few screenshots of the service

TaxiPark was developed by “Interactive Shark” a team of Ugochi Ugbomeh (C.T.O), Timi Omai (C.F.O), Adejola Adeyeye (C.O.O) and Babatunde Folorunso (Marketing guru for TaxiPark).

Founder/CEO of Interactive Shark, Rodney Jackson-Cole  says they were brainstorming for ideas last year when CTO and only female, Ugochi Ugbomeh suggested they build a taxi app like the many apps in the UK where she lives. They made a mock app and showed it to MetroTaxi who totally loved the idea. They then launched the first build in February.

Jackson-Cole says the next version of TaxiPark will include cool new features like GPS tracking and proximity alerts.

DOWNLOAD HERE

Source: TechLoy