Goa, India’s own little piece of paradise. But once you check-in to your hotel and decide to go explore this place, be prepared to hear taxi fares which would put surge pricing to shame. The local Goa taxi have a monopoly and as a result, even short cab rides end up costing a bomb. Back in the day, Ola tried to solve this problem, but they were soon driven out by the taxi lobby and the government.

Now, there may be some respite to this problem thanks to a new app called GoaMiles, backed by the Goa Government, which has launched just today. It works just like any other ride-hailing app. You feed in your pickup and drop location, select your desired car category and book your ride. Both cash and online payments are accepted.

I tried out the iOS app, recreating a trip which ended up costing me around INR 400 sometime last year. The result was a quote of INR 171, which though is a bit steep for a 4 km long ride, is a far cry from what I had to shell out before. Now the catch here is that the app prompts you to add money to its e-wallet even if you select cash as the payment option. I suspect this is something which occurs on shorter rides as a different search on a longer route didn’t result in the same pop-up.

Though, in the end, there were no cabs available to book. This might be a short-term issue which will get resolved as more taxis come onboard and join the app.

Bottomline

This new app ride-hailing is a welcome move. Though there is still a long way to go before for this app end up becoming the de-facto option for travel in Goa, we hope that this finally fixes the problem of getting a reasonably priced ride in the state.

Have you used GoaMiles yet? How was your experience?