Offering a smooth ride

Arupjyoti Gogoi

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Coming from a middle class family the entrepreneurial journey of Kanpur-born Amit Grover has been an impressive one. Amit did his BTech from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and also holds an MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Indore. He worked for companies like Infosys, Asian Paints, and Onida. During his stint with Onida, he used to work in the Chairman's office and handled Chairman's portfolio which in turn proved to be turning point of his professional career later.   

AHA Taxis is Amit’s second entrepreneurial venture which is an online booking platform for outstation taxis. Earlier, he was the founder and CEO of Nurture Talent Academy, the first institute for entrepreneurs in India. Amit founded AHA Taxis in early 2015 with other four co-founders Praveen Samariya (CTO), Kunal Krishna (COO), Kumar Arayan (CMO) and Shivam Mishra (CDO). AHA Taxis started operation with a small team of 6 people out of which 5 were co-founders. At present the team has expanded to 30.  Here’s how Amit recounts his entrepreneurial journey:

The Genesis

Solving problem for myself was the idea behind starting AHA Taxis. The concept was born last year when I had made a family trip to Bhopal, and the waitlisted train ticket to Delhi got canceled. Flight was expensive, buses not available and taxi guys asked me for return fare, which means I had to pay double if I wanted to book a taxi. This established practice or an unwritten rule irritated me enough to find solution. This led to the genesis of AHA Taxis. Our business model results in a win-win scenario where customers only pay one-way charges, saving up to 40 per cent and taxi drivers get increased business. We allow customers to plan their travel in advance and pre-book their desired car, either through the mobile app or online. Our taxi operators and cab owners have all been through background checks and verification, before being inducted in the system, to ensure that there is no compromise in customer safety.

From Job Seeker to Job Creator

When somebody becomes an entrepreneur, it means the person is going to take more responsibility on his shoulders. For me becoming a job creator from job seeker means creating value and also taking responsibilities in fulfilling the expectation of my team as well as customers. It is like graduating from child to becoming parent. Like parents, a job creator has to be responsible with his work, team, associates and customers. However, if you are in job it is different kind of responsibility altogether. 

The journey so far

The entrepreneurial journey has been quite exciting so far. We have opened up offices in six cities viz., Noida, Jaipur, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Mumbai. At present AHA Taxis operates in more than 350 cities and more than 1000 drivers are associated with us across India. We raised an angel funding from venture fund ah!Ventures in November last year. Our service enjoys high popularity amongst the customers due to its convenient and transparent service and highly affordable fares.We are covering more than 1150 routes in India at present.

Challenges faced

Challenges are a part of everyday life for entrepreneurs. Challenges can be of different types depending upon the kind of business you are associated with. I think the biggest challenge we have been facing is the gap between the demand and supply. At times, we have so much of demand particularly during holidays or festive season; we have to really face challenging situations.   

Future plans

We are going to focus on channel expansion for the next 2 years. We are also planning to expand our operation to tier 2 cities and even villages. For this, we are planning to raise next round of VC funding soon. Regarding hiring, we are going to add 20 more team members by March next year, which will increase our team to 50. We are going to add another 50 people by March 2018. Our strategy is to get more people in technology, operations and marketing.