RADIO taxis are quite common in many cities around the world, but in India visitors – especially passengers at airports – are frequently harassed and fleeced by unscrupulous elements and cabbies, who dominate the taxi trade.

Fortunately, a new crop of private fleet-taxi operators are being established in major Indian cities, offering top-quality service to visitors. Despite opposition from cabbies and auto-rickshaw drivers and their unions, bureaucratic delays and several other road-blocks, the radio cab business is finally taking off in India.

About half-a-dozen companies today operate a fleet of hundreds of radio taxis in cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad, offering excellent service to visitors, including foreign tourists and domestic travellers.

The government of India – and several state governments – is also encouraging private players to start such operations to cater to the huge demand for quality taxi services. Many of the operators prefer the franchise route, allowing individuals to run their vehicles under a common brand and sharing the infrastructure.

The overwhelming response from the public to the introduction of radio taxis in the major metros has seen many operators redraw their plans, hiking up their investment outlays and planning major expansion.

Hundreds of millions of rupees are expected to be invested in the sector over the next two to three years, which will see nearly 200,000 modern radio cabs operating in nearly a score of Indian cities. At present, only a few thousand private radio cabs are in service in less than half a dozen Indian metros.

Radio taxis, which are hooked on to a GRPS network, are air-conditioned and modern vehicles, driven by well-dressed, well-behaved and trained drivers who are fluent in English and other languages. The company that operates the service has a call centre that directs the vehicle nearest to the customer, who could be at the airport, railway station, or at home or office.

Services are usually 24x7, the fares are transparent – though about 20 to 25 per cent dearer than the normal fares by ordinary taxis – and the customer gets printed receipts from the digital meters. Some offer value-added services like newspapers and magazines and local mobile phones, and might soon be accepting credit card payments.

Increasingly, business travellers and even a growing number of middle-class travellers in cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore are opting for these services. One of the primary factors driving demand for the professional services is the absence of haggling over fares, the refusal of a cabbie to go to a particular destination and the growing instances of cheating.

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WHEN K.T. Shameer, a 39-year-old non-resident Indian textile merchant, with a thriving business in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, stepped out of the Delhi airport terminal around 9 pm on October 10, little did he realise how dangerous it would be to opt for a private taxi service, offered by a tout, to take him to his hotel.

The three men in the vehicle took him along a deserted stretch of the highway, pointed a gun at him, snatched his wallet with cash, credit and debit cards, forcibly took details of his ATM card, then shot him dead and dumped his body along a busy national highway. Later, they withdrew over a quarter million rupees from his bank account.

The three killers were nabbed by the Delhi police within a few days, but the incident highlights the dangers that foreign tourists, international businessmen, NRIs and even Indian passengers are exposed at the country’s busiest airport in the national capital.

In the past, foreign women have been kidnapped, raped and killed by men posing as taxi-drivers, NRIs looted of jewellery and other belongings and other unwary passengers waylaid on the highways from airport terminals to the city centre.

Criminals masquerading as cabbies and touts accost visitors at most airports in India, offering to take them to hotels. Many of them bribe local police officials and are allowed to operate freely. Most of the victims are fleeced and made to part with hundreds – or even thousands – of rupees; many find their expensive cameras or mobile phones stolen; and a few are raped or murdered.

Even drivers of licensed taxis – the yellow-and-black ones in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and other cities – are prone to loot visitors, over-charging them, or refusing to go to near-by destinations. Foreigners are inevitably charged in dollars, dirhams, dinars, or euros, the meters are rigged and disputes are common.

Mumbai has about 55,000 taxis and nearly 20,000 auto-rickshaws. Many of the taxis – built in the early 1980s – are in a dilapidated state, are not air-conditioned and are driven dangerously by untrained drivers. During the monsoons, passengers get wet and the vehicles often break down.

The situation is no different in most other Indian cities. Fleecing of visitors – especially late at night or early morning – both foreign and Indian, is rampant across the country. Often, the taxi fare can add up to 35 to 50 per cent the airfare between two cities.

For instance, for a 50-minute flight between Chennai and Bangalore – a distance of about 350 km – it costs around Rs3,000. But taxis often extort over Rs500 to Rs800 in each of the two cities for distances of about 25 km to 30 km to the airports from the city centres. A foreigner ends up paying much more.

Radio cabs on the other hand have uniform rates for Indians and foreigners, and there are no extra demands at the end of the journey.

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RADIO cab operators are also eyeing the potential for raising revenues through advertising. “It is a good outdoor medium for advertisers,” explains Kunal Lalani, managing director, Mega Corp, which was the first to launch a radio cab service in India. The company, which has about 1,000 taxis at present – with licenses to operate in New Delhi, Gurgaon, Faridabad, Chandigarh and Mumbai – plans to have about 20,000 vehicles in about four years.

Advertising space is available both within the cabs and outside. While the interior advertising space – on the headrests, seat covers – target a captive audience (mostly the affluent traveller), the exterior space (overhead or on the sides) would ensure huge visibility as the taxi speeds across a city.

Revenues from advertising are likely to grow at a brisk pace, nearly tripling over the next two to three years. Of course, the fleet operator has to get official permission from the local transport authorities and the traffic police to advertise in their vehicles, involving a lot of red tape.

Not surprisingly, the existing radio cab operators are planning a huge expansion of their operations. According to Mark Pereira, CEO, Meru Cab Co Pvt Ltd, the firm plans to invest about Rs1 billion over the next four months to expand its fleet. The company, which offers services in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad, currently has a fleet of 1,800 vehicles. Another 4,000 vehicles will be added by March 2009, and by 2011, it would be operating over 12,000 taxis.

Carzonrent India Pvt Ltd, a Hertz licensee in India, operates Easycabs, which runs on the lines of Yellow Cabs in New York, and Comfort Cabs in Singapore. The company plans to expand its fleet to 3,000 by next year.

Of course, organised fleet operators face many challenges in Indian cities. One of the biggest relates to parking. With planned fleets of 5,000 to 10,000 vehicles, finding parking space in congested cities is getting to be a huge problem. In Mumbai, for instance, the civic body plans to raise the parking charges for vehicles.

Parking charges at airports are also on the rise. Mumbai and Delhi airports have been privatised and the new operators have jacked up parking charges. Both Bangalore and Hyderabad also have new airports promoted by private operators, who charge hefty parking fees.

Then there is the fear of riots. In India, the first target of protestors and rioters are public vehicles, especially taxis. Consequently, insurance premiums and costs will soar for private operators, more so in cities like Mumbai, which have witnessed a spate of riots of late.

But the bold new crop of entrepreneurs who are operating these radio cab services are willing to take risks, even as they go about changing the very face of this crucial business in India, which has for years been associated with criminals and anti-social elements.