Isn't it a lucrative market?
Imagine the amount of costs that such businesses need versus hotels.
Technology can makes costs even lower as it gets more sophisticated. While for the hotels, they have the hardware invested and maintaining them get more expensive as the year goes by.
There is an advertisement on the front page of two different free newspaper this morning.
I almost thought that I've taken the same newspapers twice.
It is an advertisement by Uber, the taxi hailing app company offering all expenses paid service for its drivers who now have to obtain a driving license - Private Hire Car Driver's Vocational License (PDVL) - in order to be a driver of such apps - a new law passed by the government to regulate the industry.
Of course, some would welcome such move as this levels the playing field for the taxi companies (no prize for guessing who supports it), raise the standard of service of drivers and hopefully prevents reckless driving. Some would say this is another avenue for government to make money (anything that government cannot make money from is considered illegal). Some would say that it's due to lobbying by existing incumbents whose survival is threatened by these technologically innovative disruptors.
To qualify for PDVL, applicants must hold a Class 3 or 3A driver's license for at least two years before applying, at a fee of $40. They must also undergo a medical check up and attend 10-hour PDVL course.
In response to this new regulation, Uber and Grab, two of the biggest taxi hailing app companies in Singapore, are riding on technologies to facilitate the process from preparation of records in advance to issuing reminders which will cut the time for paperwork, check up and number of visits to different government agencies by almost half the time required.
In top of that, the medical screening, training and tests as well as the application fee will be free for its drivers which costs about $350.
In the near future, Uber is also exploring seeting up a mobile clinic for drivers at its centre and having "pop-up PDVL classes" at convenient locations for drivers, saving them the need to travel to designated locations.
Of course, all these need money and whether such companies are profitable or not is another topic worht discussing.
The fact remains that these companies are able to make such decisions so quickly in response to the new regulation is impressive.
The question is what the existing players in the industry is going to do in response to this where they are still bogged down by the legacy and systems it's still trying to protect.
Isn't offering "all expenses paid" driver license application what the existing companies could have thought of providing for their drivers before Uber even existed?
It'll be interesting to watch how they respond.