GABARITANGLES

Well they may not be 'Regent Call Taxis' from Australia, where you have a choice of four or five sedans, station wagons and wheel chair accessible vehicles.  Nor can they be summoned with just one touch of the phone button, which sends the signal through the computer at the call centre straight to the nearest taxi.  But 'Call Taxis' in Chennai have well and truly arrived. 

Barathi Call Taxi, who were the first to start operations are more or less the market leaders and have used to their advantage the first to arrive tag.  In terms of 'recall' they are certainly top-of-the-mind. The rising popularity of these call taxis is proved by the number of trips that each vehicle makes per day and the rising number of corporates, who are entering into tie-ups with the call taxi operators.

The other operators in Chennai apart from Barathi are Fast Track who are in the same league as Barathi with very negligible difference in rates, while Yellow Cabs is more of a luxury sedan service with its fleet of air-conditioned Ford Ikon's.

Barathi is promoted by Venkatesh D who is the Managing Director whileSathyanarayana Kumar who is the Director oversees the whole operation.  We spoke to Williams Emmanuel,Administrative Manager and Vijay Prakash, Manager - Daily Operations.

"The response has been tremendous and that can be seen with the entry of other operators, and the market is still to be tapped.  In fact, when we started just a short time back we had just 36 cars and now we have increased our fleet of vehicles to 54.  We use Maruti Omnis and our service is 24 hours for 365 days of the year.  Each driver has the car all the time and they do 12 to 14 hour shifts from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m.  The night shifts will have a batch of 8 - 10 vehicles on each day of the week.  This batch of drivers will take care of calls during the night, which by the way are very few and are usually trips to or from the airport.  Apart from their compulsory night shift in a week if the driver feels rested enough and wants to do night shift in addition to his day trip he is free to do so.," says Williams Emmanuel.

Peak hours are between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. and between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. The rates are metered using digital electronic meters from Pricol. There are packages available for those who want to make use of call taxis for trips to places like Mahabalipuram and to various fun centres on the outskirts of the city. The charges are quite cheap at Rs 400/- for 50 kms under 5 hours. For every additional kilometre above 50 kms it is Rs 5/-, while for every additional hour after 5 hours it is Rs 50/- per km.

"Right now payment can be made only through cash but we also have some tie-ups with top corporate's like TVS Electronics and Natwest where the employees give receipt to the driver after a trip and the payment is collected by us from the company directly. As for the customers, they need to call atleast an hour before the actual time they want the taxi to come. Because of the heavy traffic in Chennai, that is the safest time limit that can ensure timely arrival of the taxi at the customer's place. Some customer's call at say 6.30 p.m. during peak hours, when it is very difficult for the driver to reach the customer's place on time. That is why we request customer's to book the taxis an hour before the scheduled time. Our customer's are mostly office goers, business executives and software professionals. In case of a break down the nearest vehicle will be sent to pick up the customer and drop him/her at their destination at no extra charge", says Vijay Prakash