Karhoo
Creating Seamless Travel Experiences

Founded in 2016, Karhoo is a B2B marketplace connecting brands with taxi and private hire vehicles (PHV) fleets worldwide to deliver e-hailing straight from any app and website. The company improves mobility in crowded and polluted urban centers, making traveling safe, convenient, and sustainable for people. As a revolutionary ground transportation technology ecosystem, karhoo supports the hospitality and travel industry in delivering a seamless customer experience and eliminating the inconvenience of shuffling through multiple apps and websites during a travel journey. Travelers can book their rides in advance or on-demand from the same website or app they used for booking hotels and bus or air tickets to reach the airport or destination.

In an interview with CIO Applications, Vanessa Heydorff, Senior Vice President of Karhoo, explains how they are helping businesses revamp guest experience and open up windows for ancillary revenues.

Please give us a brief background on Karhoo.

We started five years back with a mission to connect to hundreds of companies and millions of drivers worldwide. About five years ago, there was a need for digitalization in the travel and hospitality industry as most booking processes were handled over call centers, emails, and texts. Brands wanted a strategic approach to extend their product for offering added value and a better customer experience. Observing this need, we launched Karhoo to empower local and national taxi fleets to offer quality, volume trips. Along with presenting the taxi or PHV options to the end-user, we also wanted to centralize all contractual payment and invoicing.

Bringing together thousands of regulated fleets and millions of drivers, we offer the services in advance as well as on-demand. While booking a hotel, individuals can book a taxi in advance, be it three months or three days prior. Users can also book a taxi ondemand whenever they wish during their stay at the hotel. Karhoo provides them with at least five competitive quotes to choose from while booking rides. They can also see the updated pick-up time, track the driver on the map, and have smooth communication with the driver.

For a truly door-to-door experience, businesses can provide their customers with airport and train station transfers. Our ‘Demand Partners’ can easily embed taxi or any for-hire ride service into their website for end users using Karhoo API, SDK, and microsite. This way, businesses can keep the customer in their ecosystem as customers do not need to visit another website or app to book a taxi. Moreover, Karhoo Marketplace accumulates vast amounts of data in full compliance with personal data protection regulations and partner confidentiality. This enables us to work on matching demand and supply efficiently while providing valuable reports and insights to partners for better operating and advancing their business.

Additionally, our platform integrates with clients’ account profiles and loyalty program management systems enabling end customers to earn and burn loyalty points while booking a taxi. Also, we simplify transactions and finances between demand-making companies and supply partners around the world. Our platform is utilized by major travel agencies and hotel chains across the globe to streamline their customer experience.

In essence, Karhoo allows businesses to accomplish their goals of providing a seamless customer experience through one contract, one integration, and one bill.

Could you elaborate more on the features and functionalities of the platform?

This easy and seamless white-label platform can be integrated into the website or app of any company or brand. Our partners can easily add Karhoo Mobility Exchange functionality into their own native apps without any additional maintenance and deliver an end-to-end cab booking experience to customers. The SDKs handle the networking, data models, business logic, and many other challenges associated with direct API integration, enabling clients to focus on enhancing the user experience.

Today, businesses want to serve as a one-stop-shop and keep customers in their ecosystem by delivering additional services. We provide them with the capability to achieve that goal while enhancingpeople's travel experience across various touchpoints.

How does your role in the company helping Karhoo map the roadmap?

I love taking on challenges. It is this enthusiasm that drove me to join Karhoo as the SVP and become a catalyst for their growth. Before that, I worked at Booking.com as the Western Europe Managing Director. Since karhoo is a young company, we needed several strategic implementations to scale it at the European level as well as internationally. Leveraging my experience of formulating strategies to deal with the different markets and industries, I collaborated with the executive team to extend our reach around the world. I also have the expertise to deal with IT development for hotels and travel agencies. We work in liaison with tech members to decide on the necessary IT developments required to address these sectors. With an aim to scale the company in the next two or three years, we plan to connect to most of the European fleets. From the geographical standpoint, our strategy is to have a full implementation in the U.S and Asia. While from the product side, we envision adding cab sharing, mobility, and pooling. Lastly, our focus is to add at least 40 percent green vehicles on our platform within the two or three next year.