E-HAILING APP – A CASE STUDY

Developing a Sophisticated E-Hailing App

What started off as a small venture for requesting cabs, soon turned into an elaborate, smooth operator in the e-hailing space! Auto-n-Cab has been rolled out as an Auto-centric service that aims to connect the city’s people to its Auto-rickshaws, through the app.

Synsoft was approached by the patrons to notch out this intricate application, for which we then brought together various levels of expertise in Android native development, iOS native development, web server development, UX designing, etc.

The journey, as I said, started from a very modest requirement…that of a customer app that shows nearby Drivers, from where they can simply request a ride, while the driver can receive the request in real time and Accept/Reject it. It was decided what we would go for a 3rd party messaging service, and PubNub made to the top of the list.

A very keen response was soon anticipated, and the app requirements grew much deeper. Today the e-hailing app has almost all the possible features that can be imagined of an elegant taxi hailing app. To mention only a few…

• • A simple and sophisticated UX
  • Locate and show nearby autos/cabs, in real time, on a Map
  • Hail for a cab, and receive confirmation on the request
  • Track your cab via a countdown to arrival,
  • See the ride from start to end
  • Receive full fare breakup on destination!
  • Secure Payments through PayTM Wallet,
  • Receive instant email with ride-receipt
  • Available on Android and iOS.
  • Runs a unique Loyalty Program
  • City-wise Fare Cards

The Administrative Panel of the application has similarly evolved from an initial simplistic Driver management tool to enhanced reporting, tracking and many ride-enabling features. Apart from core admin routines, it contains a feature-rich CSR panel for daily operations of support and engagement. Ride transaction Audits, New Customer enrollments, Failure reporting, form some of the panel’s highlights.

The Dares and Dynamisms:

• • The dare was to contain the requirements in the first phase. The application space was so demanding, and there was so much that could be done, that it was difficult to restrict the specs.
    The dynamism was to keep the team inspired…the app itself was so inspiring an idea… the team followed it like a dream!

• • One of the technical dares was to achieve a fool proof, round trip, of the request mechanism from the customer to the nearest free driver and back! We achieved this through much fine tuning and modulating of the algorithm over time.
    The dynamism was to leverage from the available infrastructure of the city’s connectivity and bandwidth to achieve a closed loop, tenacious, throughput.

• • The dare for the QA team was to recreate the real life scenario. Many unforeseen curbs were revealed through this phase.
    The dynamism was in enjoying the entire experience, from conception to evolution!

Learning’s

While an app may soon become the highlight of the market, the lessons learnt by both the tech and administrative team through its design, development and execution, forms the bread crumbs to its own success. Synsoft too has earned several practical lessons through this journey. The app being affected considerably by human and device interference, lead to diverse challenges, some as basic as connectivity outages and as difficult as complex third party service dependencies, from unavoidable device abnormalities to trivial personal pursuits, from the very crucial server performance to the inevitable CSR accessibility!