Meru Cabs to expand operation in overseas market next year

Having achieved close to 50% market share in India, radio cab service provider Meru Cabs, now plans to expand its operation in the overseas market next year.

"Meru has good demand in the Indian market. Presently, we have close to about 50% share in the domestic market. Now onwards, we want to expand our operation in the overseas market next year," Meru Cabs' chief executive officer Rajesh Puri said.

"We will start operation at least two countries in the Asian market next year," he said. Puri, however, did not reveal the country name.

The country's largest radio cab service provider plans to ramp-up its operations by adding 2,500 cars and hiring an equal number of drivers by December 2011 to cater to increased consumer demand.

"Presently, we have 5,000 cars and plan to deploy another 2,500 cabs by December 2011 to cater to the consumer demand," Puri said.

Meru plans to invest Rs200 crore for procuring and deploying 2,500 cabs. "Rs200 crore investment will go into procuring and deploying 2,500 cabs," he said.

"Currently we have 5,000 drivers across four cities. We plan to recruit additional 2,500 drivers by December 2011," he said.

The company receives around 50,000 requests for cab bookings in a single day across Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad. "We receive around 15 lakh requests for cabs in every month," he said, adding "during peak hours, the company found itself rejecting nearly 40% requests, prompting it to hire additional drivers."

The firm is also looking at extending to other cities.

"We are evaluating four cities at the moment -Chennai, Pune, Ahmedabad and Kolkata," he said.

Meru also threw in a value-add in terms of lost and found feature. Whereby if a consumer leaves a bag behind, the cab could be traced and the luggage returned.

"All drivers are selected only after police verification. They are all trained drivers and their licenses are checked," Puri said.

On the current industry, Puri said, "It is difficult to exactly estimate the market size, but our market share in the four markets we operate in would be close to about 50%"