4k orders a month with Onde.Light: here’s Kazakhstan’s rising taxi star

Is it possible to make more than 4k orders in the first month of launch, then scale to three more cities in the next three months? It is, as proven by ToychPro, a taxi startup from Kazakhstan.

ToychPro launched in Kazygurt - a city in Kazakhstan with a population of 100,000 people. The citizens struggle with transportation and have to deal with bad roads, traffic jams, and unreliable taxis. With the help of free-to-use Onde.Light solution, the founder of ToychPro has decided to change that.

Toychibek Abdukarimov, the company’s founder, is a 27-year-old software engineer. In this article, he shares his insights on launching a successful taxi business with low investment. Discover how ToychPro has shaped a scalable business model and become the leading taxi company in the region.

ToychPro: how it started

Toychibek launched his first on-demand transportation company, Ozar Taxi, several years ago. Then, after the company’s investors had some financial problems, the business was sold and the services were eventually discontinued.

However, the mobility problems in Kazygurt persisted, and Toychibek was eager to provide customers with a solution.

“The taxi service in the city was unreliable. Due to high congestion, a taxi you ordered wouldn’t come, or its driver would ask a completely different price for a ride than agreed upon. As a result, the city residents would avoid using taxis altogether, which led to even greater traffic jams.

I wanted to provide high-quality services at the lowest possible price, with the drivers’ commission as low as possible. That seemed an equation hard to solve.”

So Toychibek decided to launch his own taxi business—and make it less dependent on the investors from the outset. That’s how he found the Onde.Light platform.

“Onde.Light has all the required features for order placement and management. It’s also free to use, thus ideal for scaling and testing a business.

I launched my taxi services using Onde.Light’s dispatch panel, driver application, and admin panel for order management and business analytics. The clients place their orders via the website or by phone.”

In the first month of the launch, ToychPro made about 4k orders and attracted around 70 drivers. Finding like-minded people in other locations has allowed the company to grow to three more cities almost immediately.

Attracting loyal drivers and keeping them motivated

The first drivers came and stayed based on personal trust in the company’s founder. As Toychibek is a local, he knows and understands a lot about the city and its problems.

“One of the main challenges was to persuade drivers their data was safe with our system. Initially, many drivers feared the data could be stolen, with the licenses uploaded through the app.

We were able to show them that Onde.Light software guarantees the highest level of user data safety for both drivers and passengers. Besides, we managed to convince them ToychPro is there to build an honest business.”

During the first launch period, the drivers discovered that working with ToychPro was convenient, easy, and profitable.

“Employees loved the driver application. The company trains its drivers to use the software optimally. The app’s handy features, such as a smart order queue and real-time location tracking, helped us win drivers’ trust.”

As a result, the first drivers have attracted more colleagues.

“Training drivers to use the app was essential for the company. The system is really handy, but they need to know how to take orders, communicate with customers, and optimize their order acceptance.”

In Kazakhstan, the Internet is not equally available everywhere. So ToychPro educated the drivers on choosing the right network provider and decided to distribute network access in the cabs, making drivers’ work easier and the passengers’ rides nicer.

ToychPro: how it’s going

What started with a deep understanding of customers’ pain points is now a successful taxi business, eager and ready to grow further.

“The taxi service in the region was underdeveloped. The customers were struggling to find a reliable on-demand mobility service. Besides, the pricing of most competitors was disastrously unpredictable.

ToychPro has changed that for the passengers. But this way, we also raise the bar for other taxi companies. Customers now know they shouldn’t settle for less.”

Solving real people’s problems with your taxi service

Having started with Onde.Light, ToychPro has been very efficient with order distribution from the outset. That helped the company to win customer satisfaction and trust very quickly.

“The prices we charge are always stable, predictable, and transparent for both passengers and drivers. Together with the high level of our services, this solves the trustworthiness problem the transportation in the city was facing.

Plus, since Onde.Light is a free solution, and ToychPro can offer very competitive trip prices. We also penalize drivers if they charge higher prices than the agreed upon. Thus, the price/quality guarantee.

The customers generally trust local taxis more than large foreign competitors like Uber or YandexTaxi, and with ToychPro, they have a good reason for that.”

Standing out from the competition

The company has made a strong case differentiating itself from other taxi providers in the region. The main competitive advantage is the pricing, both affordable and predictable for the customer.

In terms of attracting drivers, personal trust and good promotion were the cornerstones of ToychPro’s success:

“Competitors require drivers to pay high commissions to the taxi company. Fines are high, too, so drivers have quickly figured working with ToychPro is lucrative.

I have previous experience of running a taxi business, so it was easier for me to find drivers.”

Promotion, online and offline

“Even though the general level of the competition in the city was low when I launched the business, I had to do my best promoting the new services.”

Here, thorough market analysis has helped Toychibek big time, too. Before the launch, he analyzed the most popular places where people order a taxi, and hung promotional banners there. Some of the locations were:

• Schools,
• Clinics and hospitals,
• Shopping malls,
• Banks,
• Popular cafes and restaurants.

“I also used banners on the doors of government agencies where I promoted ToychPro.

Online promotion was a winning move, too:

• We posted ads in different social media communities where taxi drivers could see how profitable it is to work with ToychPro. This helped him efficiently attract the drivers to deal with the first order load.
• We posted invitations to use the new taxi services in the social media communities frequented by potential taxi clients.”

The company still sends WhatsApp updates to its passengers, telling them about relevant news and promotions, and stimulating repeated orders.

Growing your taxi business: some tips from ToychPro

ToychPro’s rapid business growth allowed Toychibek to expand. He found small taxi companies in nearby cities and offered them partnerships. These partners were properly trained to work with the system, the panel was set up, and Toychibek now gets a percentage of the revenue from the rides made in new locations.

The company plans to expand to more cities, including Turkistan (143,000 inhabitants), and aims to launch a food delivery service in Karabulak.

“Taxi business is complicated. In the first few years, you need to forget about weekends and just work a lot.

My most important advice for beginning taxi entrepreneurs is to focus on the drivers first. Attract and retain loyal employees for your company, since the customers will judge the services by your drivers. And if there are drivers, the company can attract more and more passengers.

Also, marketing and advertising are super important! They allow the company to grow, it’s how ToychPro has grown. Online ads don’t need to cost you a lot, but they can increase your brand visibility from the outset.”

How to choose a software platform for your taxi business?

Toychibek has analyzed many software platforms popular in the region and discovered Onde.Light offers the most favorable prices for the right product feature set.

“Here are the criteria I used to compare the solutions:

• Price. There’s no other solution out there that’d be free to use, offering a similar set of technical features plus 1,000 free rides a month on top of that. The commission for every successive ride (1.9%) is the lowest in the market.
• Platform features. Besides a handy dispatch, a functional driver app, and a branded web solution for order placement, the Onde.Light software has many other features that make business easier for ToychPro. For instance, there is no campaign freeze in case of non-payment: you get 7 days to complete the payment.
• Business analytics. Thanks to the My hub feature, you can track every transaction made, keep an eye on drivers’ registration, and get elaborate reports on orders placed and completed. It’s perfect for proving traction to potential investors and business partners, and also gives you data-driven insights.
• Technical support. Support’s 24/7 accessibility is a huge advantage. I could always get the help I needed, any time of the day.”

While Toicibek has been using the Onde.Light platform successfully, he also noted several additional features that could improve his operations further. His feedback has been invaluable to us, and our team is currently reviewing these ideas to see how we can integrate them into future updates.