Echoing chief executive Andrew Skelton, who recently told investors about a fresh $8 million investment in technology and marketing, Mr Ludick said the company hopes passengers will see that traditional cabs are taking the fight to Uber on its own turf, by beating it in the tech game.

"Our competition has a 'bring your own' model, so the experience and service is as good as the best phone or the weakest phone that a driver has," Mr Ludick said.

"So we can design more unique experiences, which is where we want to go and differentiate ourselves, by creating things that don't already exist in the industry ... we have the skillset to start having our own identity instead of trying to copy other digital incumbents in the space."

Variety and choice

He said the biggest natural advantages cabs enjoyed over Uber in big cities was the ability to hail them in the street. Cabcharge is working on a method of turning that into a digital experience, whereby the app would take over the journey, including payment once a cab was hailed.

Cabcharge CEO Andrew Skelton said an extra $8 million would be pumped into marketing and technology as the group seeks to make 13CABS more hip and cool among younger users. Ben Rushton

As well as making this convenient for the customer, who would not have to worry about the payment, it would give Cabcharge a much richer supply of data to analyse for future idea development.

"The taxi industry has a lot more variety and choice than many people think, but we need to showcase that better in a digital experience. Hailing a cab is just one example where there isn't a digital experience – our competition wouldn't want to showcase that, because they can't provide that service," Mr Ludick said.


"We've got a vision for the year that we would want people to download our app, book a cab and pay for it, and we would let them do that without creating an account, just by giving us a name and a mobile number. We would then hope they would see the other digital experiences possible and see benefit in signing up for an account and making us the app they go to first."

As part of its decision to base its cloud platform entirely on Azure, as opposed to rival options from Amazon Web Services and Google, Mr Ludick said the company is tapping into the suite of applications and software on offer, including the Dynamics 365 customer relationship management platform.

Uber is getting more prominent, but the cars cannot be hailed in the street ... Cabcharge is hoping to turn this into a digital advantage. AP

He said this will mean individual customers will see their options and services evolve on the app over time, with suggestions and predictive services. It will also tailor its offerings for individual customers at different times, based on whether they are in a business or social setting.

"The same passenger has very different needs based on the circumstances they are in, so the more interactions we can store with a customer the better we can work on giving them unique experiences," Mr Ludick said.

He said Cabcharge will make its e-tickets available for Apple and Google Wallets in the year ahead, and would also integrate Apple Pay into its app in the near future, and make Chinese tech giant Alibaba's Alipay mobile payment platform available in cabs.