Uber has many competitors round the world like – Ola in India; Didi Kuaidi in China; Grab in South Asia and now this has a new competitor in Australia – GoCatch. GoCatch is a Sydney based app for taxi booking that is launching a component called ridesharing which is more like GrabCar service of Grab. The users of GoCatch will now be able to get a GoCar from the GoCatch app, accessing the private cars from point to point transportation. This GoCatch will do while abstaining from the established practice like surge prices. There are no other startups for ridesharing in Australia as of now. According to Ned Moorfield the CEO of Grab, local players can be strong competitors to Uber and achieve success like what Grab achieved in South East Asia and Lyft in United States.
Gograb is a five year old startup and has been growing steadily in Australia in its Taxi Booking Services. It has 100,000 bookings per month with 350,000 passengers and 35,000 taxi drivers registered currently with it. GoCatch plans to take on Uber with various implementations. First of all it would not use surge pricing that Uber uses in which large demand leads to fare inflation. According to Ned people of Australia resent the concept of surge pricing and stop using cabs when there is a price rise. GoCar would do this differently as it would clearly define peak rates and off peak rates. Ned feels that this would help get more business in those times. GoCar will charge lower commission from drivers on off peak fares which would be 15 percent against 20 percent charged by Uber. GoCatch promises to pay the drivers on daily basis and not weekly as Uber does. GoCatch is notably depending on local competitor image. While Uber is fighting legal battle in courts of Australia on whether cab drivers should pay the tax, Ned feels that the customers would counter to local company that donate to taxes of the country.
