I’ve been a pretty vocal fan of Hailo and have watched their growth in London with an utterly selfish delight (efficiency, stored payment, emailed receipts-I could go on). The sheer simplicity of their interface does no justice to the amount of work and testing which I believe went on behind the scenes. I heard rumours about their Dublin plans quite a while ago (actually from one of their drivers) and was a bit surprised at the choice.
There’s no doubt that people want a great taxi-on-demand service. All things being equal, if you could replicate the combination of cab drivers who know where they’re going with an easy booking system, it’s a done deal. What Hailo solved in London was a marketplace problem.
Unlike London however, Dublin (and many other cities) presents a slightly more discreet challenge. Dublin taxis are a mixed bag. Okay, I’m being diplomatic-Stalin’s gulags probably provided a better service than some Dublin taxi drivers. In fact, taxi deregulation in Ireland has arguably done more harm to Irish tourism than the recession.
In order to succeed, Hailo, or indeed anyone else, will need to first tackle this supply problem. And that’s a whole other box of dolphins.
Europe’s lack of homogeneity has always made scaling business models tricky. For Hailo, Dublin is going to be a test for how flexible their strategy is. (and that’s without factoring competition). It will be intriguing to watch.