New app helps sort out ride-hailing services
With Southern Nevada suddenly turning into a hotbed of ride-hailing activity, it may be time to get a scorecard to sort it all out.
Or at least an app.
That's what Murugesh Annadurai, a senior software engineer at a Bay area-based tech company, considered as he contemplated which ride-hailing service would best meet his needs when commuting around San Francisco, the home of several transportation network companies.
Annadurai said he was accustomed to using Internet searches to find his best flight options through fare aggregators like Expedia.com. He asked some of his friends how they went about finding the best option for getting from one place to another in the city.
They all replied with the same answer: We don't know.
That's what launched Annadurai on a six-month quest in his spare time to develop Zailoo, a free cost-comparison smartphone application that sorts ride-hailing options based on price and wait times.
"When I was trying to figure out which service to use, it was always a painful process," Annadurai said. "In San Francisco, I would have to look at one app's service, then look at another and then another before making a decision about which was best for me at the time."
The two earliest arrivals to the Southern Nevada ride-hailing landscape, Uber and Lyft, are compared on the app as are two of Uber's premium services, UberXL and UberSelect.
When app users type in an originating address and a destination, it calculates the distance and estimated travel time of the ride. Based on those estimates, the app produces a list of available services and fare approximations. The app also gives an estimated time of arrival of the closest vehicle. It also indicates when dynamic fare pricing is in effect for Uber and Lyft.
The app is free and can be downloaded from the Apple or Google Play stores.
Annadurai said Zailoo is in the process of adding Curb, the taxi industry ride-hailing app that debuted in Southern Nevada last week, and making contact with GetMe, the Dallas-based service that intends to start serving Southern Nevada on Nov. 12. He said Curb should be on Zailoo's lists sometime in December.
When the app is used in other cities, it lists Sidecar, another ride-hailing company not available in Southern Nevada, and more premium services offered by Uber and Lyft. The company is exploring adding more companies as they come online.
Annadurai had a less scientific response when asked about where the name "Zailoo" came from. He wanted to find something that demonstrated the frustration of hating to search multiple applications for a simple solution.
"Some tech companies have been coming out recently that started with the letter Z," he said. "I don't know. Zailoo. That sounds kind of techie, doesn't it?"
Contact reporter Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Find @RickVelotta on Twitter.
