Cabforce Launches Officially At Nordic Travel Fair
Finland-based Cabforce launched officially at the Nordic Travel Fair last week. The service allows business and recreational travelers to book a taxi up to two hours in advance, and pre-pay with a credit card online. This saves the stress of being "taken for a ride" on a longer route in an unfamiliar city, and simplifies payment and language hassles with local drivers.
Cabforce solves a big pain-point for business travelers. Often times, taxis in unfamiliar cities will give you receipts with no indication about the currency, possible taxes, or even the city traveled in. This can be a complicated situation to resolve due to the language barrier you may come across while abroad. Cabforce allows you to book, pre-pay, and receive an electronic receipt online.
Cabforce is a Vigo accelerator portfolio company and is currently available in Amsterdam, Brussels, Helsinki, London, Munich, Oulu, Stockholm and Saint Petersburg.
Ok, Stockholm and St Petersberg I get (the Swedish taxi "system" is just plain weird), but for the others, not such a big use case.
Based on my Garage48 and StartupSauna experiences, this is a much bigger problem in the Baltics and Poland ;) so would be more impressive if they were launching there.
Mike, value prop is somewhat different depending on the user, city etc. For some occasions it is just to get the receipt and prepayment option. For some another occasion the main benefit is the guarantee that you will get prebooked taxi when you need and hence you avoid queuing.
Initially I didn't get the value prop but operating my own startup and having a team that travels a lot I can really see the value.
No more London "licensed taxi receipts" - meaning possibility to reclaim back VAT! And no need for our guys to withdraw money on company credit cards to pay for taxi's in another currency - meaning no more credit card cash withdrawal costs and no more foreign currency pots around at the office waiting for the next trip.
So from my perspective, the major benefits arent with the ordering, in stead they are with the payment, although services like Square can offer the same type of payment benefits.