It's time to ride with Hailo
- By Richard Branson -
- Feb 05, 2013
Everyone knows I love a good ride. But when the ride is made possible by a smart and simple app that cuts into the 60% of wasteful time drivers spend looking for passengers, then it becomes a great ride for millions of people.
The Hailo app acts as a matchmaker between empty cabs and would-be passengers. From any corner store, home, office or pub in cities such as London, Dublin, Toronto, Chicago and Boston, you can pull out your smartphone and, with a tap, virtually hail a cab.
Taxi drivers leave US$40M on the table driving around empty, and customers lose one million hours searching for cabs every day around the world. As we got to know more about Hailo's product and plans, we learned that much like Virgin companies, it was obsessed with making things better for its customers and employees. Cabbies in every city are involved in improving the Hailo experience. Three London Black Cab drivers - Terry, Russ, and Gary - are now Hailo co-founders and key managers. Since launching a year ago, Hailo has carried 2.5 million passengers - and its drivers are cutting down on dead miles, emissions, and inefficiency.
Hailo is a business that improves the experience for customers and employees and fits all the things I look for in an investment. I have just become an investor and look forward to seeing Hailo enter great big taxi towns such as New York and Tokyo and spread across Europe over the next few months.
Can’t be more excited to be part of what Hailo calls "the evolution of the hail."
Let’s ride!
By Richard Branson. Founder of Virgin Group
