Can taxi booking firms ensure safety for Southeast Asian women?

SINGAPORE/HANOI - A co-founder of GrabTaxi, Uber's biggest competitor in Southeast Asia, remarked earlier this year that safety is so central to the online taxi booking business that some of his drivers feel like they are tracked at every moment - even when they go to the bathroom.

The Malaysian company and Brazil-based rival Easy Taxi made headlines over the past year by attracting over $400 million in investment. But a rape accusation against an Uber driver in New Delhi has thrown taxi apps under a different spotlight.

Uber has since been banned in the Indian capital, adding to bans or legal action in several countries including Spain, Thailand and the United States. Authorities' common complaint is that Uber's service includes private vehicle owners, which contrasts with GrabTaxi and Easy Taxi.

Both use licenced taxi drivers, which helps their strategy to market themselves as safe for women in cities such as Jakarta. The transportation system in the Indonesian capital is among the region's most dangerous for women, according to a survey by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

With safety at the center of their marketing strategy, the rape allegation against the Uber driver in India could threaten the image of these firms, whose investors include Japan's SoftBank Corp and other international names.

"Women are our target audience," said Nguyen Tuan Anh, general manager at GrabTaxi in Vietnam. The majority of the company's passengers are women - as much as 70 percent in the Philippines.

GrabTaxi said it only works with drivers of taxi firms that check identity documents, driving licences and criminal records. It asks drivers to resubmit those documents upon signing up, and confirms that applicants are still contracted to taxi firms.

"Its drivers are all from known taxi brands so I don't have to worry about safety," said banker Bui Thi Thu Trang. The 30-year-old said she uses GrabTaxi frequently in Hanoi and has enjoyed numerous discounts and offers, which include vouchers for make-up from Shiseido Co Ltd 4911.T.

Representatives from Uber in Vietnam did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this article. An Uber spokesman in Singapore did not provide comment.

PHOTOGRAPHS

GrabTaxi and Easy Taxi typically provide driver details such as photograph and phone number. GrabTaxi also allows passengers to "share" their trips online so family and friends can track their location. On both apps, pick-up points are chosen by the user.

"If it is late at night, without apps like this you've got to go on the street," said Joon Chan, regional managing director for Easy Taxi, southeast Asia. Easy Taxi's driver screening includes testing patience and cordiality, Chan said.

Park Byung Joon, head of the urban transport management programme at Singapore's SIM University, said taxi booking firms need to improve processes to ensure the drivers they screen are the individuals driving their cars.

"I use taxis a lot in Singapore as well, but I hardly ever check" whether the driver matches the photo, he said. "When you finally check it ... you are already sitting in the taxi."

GrabTaxi, co-founded by Anthony Tan in 2012, reported a six-fold jump in users over the past year to about 500,000. It estimated 3 bookings are made through its app every second across Southeast Asia.

"Passengers in Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia - the big problem is safety," Tan said in an interview with Reuters in May discussing GrabTaxi's ride-tracking function.

Tan said one driver talked to him about safety features such as drivers' photos and details. "'My face is there in the cloud, tracking me all the way,'" Tan quoted the driver as telling him. "'The cloud knows I'm going to the toilet, it's staring at me.'"

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

This robot sells coffee machines in Japan

TOKYO - Move over George Clooney -- Nestle has employed a fleet of chirpy robots to sell its coffee machines in Japanese stores. The Hollywood heart-throb, who has become the global face of the Nespresso brand, has been given the elbow in favour of Pepper, a cheeky and chatty android, which its makers claim can answer customers' questions. "How do you enjoy coffee? Number one: An eye-opener coffee; Number two: A post-meal cup of coffee," Pepper asked a TV personality at a promotion event Monday. The 120-centimetre (four-foot) tall robot has a human-like face perched on top of a white plastic body, with rollers and what looks like a tablet computer on its chest. The gimmick will eventually see 1,000 stores across Japan with their own Pepper, which makers say can understand up to 80 percent of conversations. The robots will "help us discover consumer needs through conversations between our customers and Pepper," said a joint statement from Nestle and SoftBank, whose French arm Aldebaran developed the technology. Pepper, which was unveiled in June by SoftBank president Masayoshi Son, already sells mobile phones at SoftBank's 74 Japanese stores, where it has been used to collect customers' opinions. Engineers claim the robot's artificial intelligence has allowed it to expand its conversational ability by listening to what customers say. The robot will go on sale to the public in February, with a price tag of 198,000 yen ($1,670) plus monthly fees. George Clooney, meanwhile, will not. © 1994-2014 Agence France-Presse

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Meet Nescafe's newest salesman in Japan - a robot named Pepper

TOKYO - Nestle SA will enlist a thousand humanoid robots to help sell its coffee makers at electronics stores across Japan, becoming the first corporate customer for the chatty, bug-eyed androids unveiled in June by tech conglomerate SoftBank Corp.

Nestle has maintained healthy growth in Japan while many of its big markets are slowing, crediting a tradition of trying out off-beat marketing tactics in what is a small but profitable territory for the world's biggest food group.

The waist-high robot, developed by a French company and manufactured in Taiwan, was touted by Japan's SoftBank as capable of learning and expressing human emotions, and of serving as a companion or guide in a country that faces chronic labor shortages.

Nestle said on Wednesday it would initially commission 20 of the robots, called Pepper, in December to interact with customers and promote its coffee machines. By the end of next year, the maker of Nescafe coffee and KitKat chocolate bars plans to have the robots working at 1,000 stores.

"We hope this new type of made-in-Japan customer service will take off around the world," Nestle Japan President Kohzoh Takaoka said in a statement.

Nestle did not say how much it was paying for Pepper, which SoftBank has said would retail for 198,000 yen ($1,830). The robot is already greeting customers at more than 70 SoftBank mobile phone stores in Japan.

Among Nestle's most successful Japan-only initiatives is the Nescafe Ambassador system, in which individuals stock coffee pods and collect money for them at their offices in exchange for free use of machines and other perks. Nestle wants half a million "ambassadors" by 2020 - nearly quadruple the number now as it expands into museums, beauty salons and even temples.

The Japanese unit has also developed hundreds of KitKat flavours including wasabi and green tea, and this year rolled out a KitKat that can be baked into cookies.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com