
Uber rival Karhoo shuts down - friendly_chap
https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/08/uber-competitor-karhoo-shuts-down-after-blowing-through-250m/
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kitbrennan
I'm not surprised.

They were sending out free credit emails every weekend for £45 (£15 off three
separate trips); no minimum spend, no qualification criteria, just free trips.
That's well over £150 of free credit some months!

Even with the free credit though, I still used Uber because Karhoo was a
terrible experience:

* The time estimates were never correct, no matter which car provider you selected. You were always waiting longer than 15 minutes for a car. * Dial-A-Cab always said there was a car 7 minutes away but that was a lie. You then joined a queue to be assigned a taxi, and that car could be any distance away (I never received a Dial-A-Cab taxi in under 25 minutes). * There was no continuity in the rules between providers. For example, cancellation fees were apparently on a provider-by-provider basis. * The prices were often far in excess of Uber, but for the same cars that UberX uses.

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adwhit
Karhoo were trying to do far more than Uber. They were partnering with
hundreds of minicab firms around London. Each firm was supposed to report
their taxi's locations and availabilities back to Karhoo at regular intervals.
Karhoo then aimed to co-ordinate all this information along with real-time
pricing for each, and present the user a range of options. And then dispatch a
taxi, that actually arrives when they say it will. Without controlling the
actual cars.

Most minicab firms in London do not have a server, they have a person sat at a
desk with a phone and an Excel spreadsheet. Can you imagine trying to herd
them all into use your platform correctly? Karhoo never had a chance.

For a while Karhoo became know as the "Free taxi app!" because of all their
giveaways. But no-way would you use it if it wasn't free, because it was so
unreliable.

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friendly_chap
That sounds incredibly stupid. Why didnt they distribute an GPS coordinate
sending app to said drivers?

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nigeljyng
They couldn't do that. The cab companies they work with would be worried
they're going direct to driver, which is what Uber's doing.

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hitr
In my opinion many of these startups are not able to compete against UBER on
the technology as all.In India UBER's major competitor is OLA (is very well
funded and has been around for while) but when it comes to mobile app's
usability and features,OLA is not near at all.Simply the algorithms when it
comes to features like UBER POOL ,OLA is no where close in my experience.I
have used UBER Pool quite a lot and similar service for OLA is very bad.Once
they have clubbed another person going in the opposite direction with me and i
had to get down in between.How on earth can u share your ride with a guy going
the opposite direction ?

~~~
friendly_chap
I find this rather surprising. I used to work for Hailo, and we failed mostly
due to bad business decision (focusing way too much on regulations/instead of
disrupting the taxi industry we tried to partner) with way-way less funding
($100 mil in all - at the time less than 25) we built an app of such high
quality, almost every driver or passenger we talked to (tens of thousands)
said while Uber's network is superior, they wish they could use Hailo's app
because it's just faster, nicer, feels more polished and less buggy.

It is not rocket science, really. I don't think it's about tech quality. As
our case proved, it's all about the extent of the network - people want a
(cheap) ride, if they get it, they are happy.

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elcct
If you have terrible tech there is no way you could succeed. (I am not saying
about Karhoo, it is just an example) Think of buggy app, unreliable, slow
backend, bad predictions, billing issues and so on. You really have top notch
tech to have things running smoothly. What you probably had in mind is excess
of features instead of focusing on the core ones.

~~~
friendly_chap
Not breathing or being dead is surely a disadvantage when starting a company,
but just because you breathe and you are alive does not mean you will be able
to sell that as a core value. Tech must be only good enough. No customer cares
about it unless it annoys the hell out of them. It's not Uber's USP.

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jaoued
It remains to be confirmed that they have actually secured $250mil. Very
unlikely, you close the business in less than 2 years after securing such
amount. Sometimes, loads of startups think success means raising loads of
money... hence announcing the news, thinking media will shine on them and then
get more investment followers...

~~~
ec109685
What do you base your assumptions on?

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kgtm
> We’d been hearing for about a week now that times were tight at the company,
> with employees skipping paychecks as times got lean.

Interesting. I wish there was a name for a company that is recruiting while at
the same time unable to make ends meet.

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msbot
Ha ha ha, did you interview with them, too?

~~~
kgtm
No, but I now wish I had. It would make for a hilarious blog post.

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emdowling
I used Karhoo on a few occasions for airport trips and found the experience
better than going direct to a minicab company, but only marginally. As other
people have said, it didn't offer the same level of timing accuracy as Uber
and it took quite a long time to get quote information from providers. Still,
sad to see them go. Really only leaves Uber as a viable option for London.

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quonn
These competitors are trying to do too much. Someone should instead build
infrastructure similar to Amadeus or Sabre. Not an amazing business, but
probably good enough to make a profit. It's The Right Thing and likely better
for both the general public and transportation providers and drivers.

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romanovcode
It seems that they started little less than one year ago. Crazy how much money
they spent in a little than a year.

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muad
Karwho?

I anticipate Postmates & Lyft to cave within the next year also.

Uber seems pretty unstoppable now, I think government regulation is the only
thing that can really slow them down.

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coleifer
Kar-who?

