In a press conference held at Concord Hotel, the representatives of the transport company announced that they were going to have soft launching of the ride-sharing app from December 18 (tomorrow). The press conference was addressed by Shiekh Fahad Hamad al-Thani, chairman; Zakir Hussain, CEO; Shoukath Ali, vice chairman; and Adil Khan, general manager.
“COLO stands for Consortium of Limousine Owners. We are all together to launch our own mobile application for online limousine taxi. There are 10 persons in our managing committee,” said Zakir Hussain.
He added: “In the last few years, majority of the Qatari limousine businesses have partnered with different multi-national ride-sharing app companies to provide the services. However, for the last two years, the limousine business has been facing many challenges due to less margins and high expenses. Moreover, the ride-sharing companies have increased their commissions and lowered the fares creating financial issues for the limousine companies and drivers alike. It caused adverse impact in the overall limousine market, making it difficult to sustain the businesses and forcing many of them to go out of the business. The situation lead to us to form the consortium in order to tackle the challenge.”
The CEO further said: “The application development has been in process for the past one year. And now the COLO Driver and Rider App for Android and IOS platforms are completed. We are going to have the soft launch on the National Day of Qatar. It will be available for both Android and Apple users. During the first two weeks, we will have limited number of drivers and we will increase the numbers gradually. By January 1, 2020, all our drivers will be mainstreamed and available to provide the rider service.”
Speaking on the occasion, Adil Khan said: “As we need to overcome the current crisis in the limousine business, we are forced to set our minimal fare as QR10, Further; we do not want to set fare that is less than what the Qatar’s public taxi service has. Our aim is to provide a healthy business environment and growth opportunity for the limousine community. COLO is dedicated to the limousine drivers and COLO would charge no commission from the drivers in the first two weeks of the launch to reciprocate the drivers’ efforts and quality services. However, from January 1 onward we will charge 15% of the total fare as commission in order for COLO to maintain operations.”
The general manager further said: “We are offering the safest and fastest ride-sharing service for the riders. In addition, we will integrate Pin Code system to further secure the riders, where the riders would confirm the pin code to begin the trip. We are aiming to launch a localised customer care platform. Moreover, we will offer attractive offers for the riders after the launch.”
He added: “We have received full support from the Ministry of Transportation and Communication and the Ministry of Commerce while preparing and launching the COLO app.”
When asked what’s something different they are offering from other ride-sharing companies, Adil said: “As far as operations are concerned, there is no difference. We are actually providing a platform to the limousine drivers to have good earnings and try to improve the quality also. Right now, we have about 7, 000 drivers registered with us and we are going to launch them in patches. The app is prepared under the banner of made in Qatar.”
In response to a question why they will charge more than other companies as far minimum charges are concerned, Zakir said: “Having lower fares is good for customers. However, if the person who is providing the service is not making valuable earnings, it is going to cause problems for them. We are trying to be fairer with the drivers besides providing better quality of service.”
Regarding how they are going to attract customers, Zakir said: “We have been in the business for last 15 years. However, in last six to seven years, the business has been depending completely on the mobile apps. We have over 10,000 drivers and cars here but we were completely depending on two mullet-national companies’ apps. Last year, they reduced the minimum fare from QR10 to QR8 at the same time increasing their sharing from 15percent to 25percent. It heralded disastrous situation in our business. Many limousine companies were shut down and over 2,500 drivers lost their jobs. So, we decided to create our own application to survive.
“For customers, we cannot serve you with minimum fare of QR8. If we continue with the fare, there will be no limousine business in near future. We also want to support Qatar. COLO is completely a Qatar-based business. We do not want to have some kind of unhealthy competition.”
