Laura Emmens: Cabbit Provides Dutch Consumers A Mobile App To Order Taxis At Local Taxi Companies

Cabbit provides Dutch consumers a mobile app to order taxis at local taxi companies, also in less populated areas.

Tell us about yourself?

I have been working at a bank, and later at a fintech startup. I loved working in the early stage startup environment. After that, came a great opportunity to start another tech company, in a whole different industry: the taxi business.

If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?

Start small, really small, and go live as soon as possible.

What problem does your business solve?

We all know the globally operating taxi apps, but there is still a lot of places in the world where they do not operate. Mainly because there is not enough freelance drivers in these areas.

And specifically in these lesser populated areas, transportation options are limited, and taxi’s are a great add-on to public transportation.

Cabbit fills these gaps, by partnering up with traditional taxi companies instead of working with freelance drivers.

What is the inspiration behind your business?

I experience this problem myself, when travelling within Holland and other European countries. You visit a new city, a small city, and start looking for a taxi. Most of the times, Google will find you a couple of companies, all with a very old website, and not many reviews.

It’s hard to find a reliable company. Then you have to pick up the phone, and ask for a price. You are not able to compare prices without calling all companies.

We already found the reliable taxi companies in your region, and in our app you immediately see the price of your trip. Booking a taxi is made easy, transparent and reliable.

What is your magic sauce?

We really try to cooperate with traditional taxi companies, instead of trying to compete with them. Besides, we offer the customer a simple app, that looks nice.

What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?

Our goal is to expand our business so we can service people all over The Netherlands, and later in Europe.

We are aiming to support local taxi companies all over Europe and help them to better reach the modern consumer.

What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?

Well, there are of course a lot of challenges when you start a new company. We had a rough time during covid, since that was the time we wanted to do a first pilot. But maybe the hardest challenge was after covid.

All consumers were super ready to go out again, and ready for a new taxi app. But unfortunately, taxi companies had to let go of many employees in covid times, and had trouble finding employees after covid. So demand was high, but supply was low. Being a platform, this was difficult to manage.

How do people get involved/buy into your vision?

We are always on the lookout to partner with local taxi companies that value the customer. to partner with. If you own a taxi company in The Netherlands or any other European country, check our website for more info and reach out to us! https://cabbit.app/en/for-taxi-companies/