Sunday, January 5, 2020

ANGKAS Riders Exceeding 10K Company Quota by LTFRB Offered Slots in Rival Ride-Hailer MOVE IT


Ride-hailing services have had a long time to establish itself as a familiar sight here in the Philippines, especially in the major cities. Grab from Singapore entered the country back in 2013. International ride-hailing platform Uber tried to enter the market, only to falter ultimately allow its SEA facilities to be acquired by Grab. While said services relied on four-wheeled vehicles, other startups in this vein have tried using motorcycles with passengers riding in tandem, such as local service Angkas. But the national regulators have slapped it and other similar firms with a hard cap of 10,000 riders each, something said companies are chafing at.

Angkas in particular is not happy with the limit on the number of riders it can field that was set by the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB), for the general pilot run period of motorcycle-using ride-hailing services at the start of this year. But according to ABS-CBN News a fellow, newer motorcycle ride-hailer is ready to help out its older and more experienced competition. Move It, a new motorcycle ride startup announced Monday, January 6, that it is ready to take in any Angkas contract riders what would be cut by the LTFRB’s pilot program 10,000 rider limit.

By themselves, the recently-launched Move It service only has 2,500 ride-hailing partners, with only 500 of them actively on the road answering ride requests from the Move It app. When the rider cap for motor-taxi platforms goes into effect, Angkas could see 17,000 of its 27,000-strong fleet of ride-hailers cut off from the firm. It is these excess riders that are to be courted by Move It, which is hurrying to fill its own 10,000-rider max quota before rider registration under the LTFRB pilot program ends by the following week.

"Given that we only have about 3 weeks to fill that up, it’s really a tough task to accomplish but we are working on it,” notes Eric Torres, operations general manager for Move It, which is part of the We-Load Transcargo Corp. Move It services include not only ride-hailing for motorcycle taxis, but also local delivery for parcels and food from its partner food service establishments. The standard Move It fee is a P30 base fare and additional P10 for every succeeding kilometers, and according to Torres their service does not do surge pricing rates.

Aside from Angkas and Move It, another motor-taxi ride-hailing service that has registered for the pilot program is JoyRide, which is also trying to fill its 10,000 rider slots. The motorcycle ride-hailing service pilot program proposed by the LTFRB will last until March this year.

Image courtesy of Yuga Tech

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