Local taxi drivers registered with Korea's top taxi-hailing application KakaoTaxi saw their profit rise 13.4 percent after joining the platform, the operator said Wednesday, adding it also made cab rides more accessible to a wider scope of users.
Under the survey conducted on 9,730 taxi drivers who are members of KakaoTaxi, their daily profit reached 125,807 won ($109) on average, compared with the 110,894 won posted before the launch of the application. The figure translates into an annual profit rise of 3.58 million won, Kakao said.
Kakao is also the operator of KakaoTalk, a mobile and PC messenger program that is used by around 37 million in the country, which has a population of 50 million. Its strong presence in the area lent support to the boom of the taxi-hiring application.
At the end of December, the number of calls directed to the application surpassed the 50-million mark.
As KakaoTaxi currently holds 210,000 subscribing drivers, the combined annual economic effect is estimated at 750 billion won, the company added. Its members currently stand at 8 million.
"Previously, there were many taxis that ran on streets without passengers, except for busy hours," a Kakao official said. "The KakaoTaxi platform, which adequately connects supply and demand, improved the efficiency of the taxi-driving environment."
Taxi drivers said the number of passengers also edged up 9 percent daily on the back of the application, with 21.8 percent of them being connected with the KakaoTaxi platform.
During a separate survey conducted in December, 78.4 percent of those who took taxi rides through KakaoTaxi said drivers' services were more satisfactory than ordinary cabs. Kakao said the result apparently came as passengers are allowed to give feedback to the drivers after the rides.
More than half of the drivers also said passengers connected from the platform were more polite than others.
Launched last year, Kakao said the combined distance traveled by KakaoTaxi-based cabs stands at 500 million kilometers.
The KakaoTaxi app currently stands as the leading cab-hiring platform in Korea. While Uber also tapped the Korean market through a smartphone app that links riders to the nearest non-cab driver available in the area, it was suspended for an indefinite period last year due to legal issues.
Its cab-hailing app, UberTaxi, which connects a rider to a general licensed taxi driver, however, survived. (Yonhap)
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