Hailing a cab used to be physical, in a sense where you would personally need to queue up at the taxi stand, wait for your turn, and take whatever ride comes your way. With the invention of phones, we could then hail a cab from the comfort of our homes, placing a request for the cab to arrive at our doorsteps at a particular time. The advent of smartphones has brought hailing cabs to another level, where you can now book your cab from just about anywhere using an app, as long as there is a decent Internet connection. It is nice to know that Hailo, the on-demand taxi service, has finally received the nod of approval to operate in the New York City area.
Hailo is a London-based company who has managed to raise $50.6 million to date, where their app covers a fair number of cities worldwide including London, Dublin, Boston, Chicago and Toronto. There were plans to “infiltrate” the likes of Tokyo, Barcelona, Madrid and New York City in the last round of fund raising, but city regulations have prevented numerous operators out of competing with the legacy NYC taxi market, although this approval proves that such traditional barriers are crumbling down, with Uber being the first of such services to be approved as of last night.
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