Cabsolutely offers taxi companies, and their riders, a lift

Cabs are cool again, thanks to a Memphis start-up and its innovative mobile app designed to help taxis compete in the emerging ridesharing industry.

With Cabsolutely, taxi companies and their riders now have access to an Uber- or Lyft-type mobile app which makes the summoning and payment process more user-friendly. The business was founded last year by Hungarian entrepreneurs and business partners Virag Reti and Andras Simon.

The company partnered with Yellow and Checker Cab of Memphis to launch and test the cloud-based software. Reti said they plan to refine the software here and then reach out to taxi companies in other secondary U.S. markets next month.
Reti said the software is simple for both the rider and the cab company, maximizing the user experience in the same way ridesharing companies have been able to. Riders can pay through the mobile app, and those payments go directly to the driver or the taxi operator, which pays Cabsolutely at the end of each month.

Luck is to credit for Reti and Simon, two young entrepreneurs from Budapest, Hungary, ending up in Memphis. They were looking for a start-up accelerator program and found Memphis' own Start Co. via a website dedicated to connecting founders to accelerators, www.f6s.com.

Cabsolutely applied in March and was approved in April.

"The stars aligned," Reti said.

The idea for Cabsolutely evolved as Reti and Simon got further involved in development and further entrenched in the start-up accelerator process. Their first idea was for a ridesharing service that would transport shoppers from retail centers or malls with their large purchases. Reti gave the example of taking a bus to IKEA, buying a shelf and then struggling to bring that shelf home using public transportation.

The business partners quickly realized that idea wasn't feasible in the U.S. and transitioned to an idea for a ridesharing service from one busy place to another, from an airport to Downtown, for instance. The app would encourage riders to share cabs between destinations.

But as they started working with taxi companies, and as those companies began to see the innovation behind the concept, the vision evolved again.

"We realized their technology was so old and outdated, there was no way to integrate it," the 22-year-old Reti said. "Their technology is older than me."

Reti has an engineering degree from Peter Pazmany Catholic University in Budapest, while Simon has a computer science degree from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics.

She is in the process of relocating to Memphis and currently is working on a visa.

Memphis is an ideal base for Cabsolutely because it presents opportunities for expansion.

"All the tech happens on the two coasts, and there's this huge place in the middle where we can grow big, fast," Reti said.
She also referenced the welcoming and supporting community she's encountered in the Bluff City: "Maybe the best word is 'open.'"

So far, Cabsolutely has raised $95,000 in seed funding. It has four team members, all of whom are based in Hungary.
"The money goes further in Memphis than in San Francisco," she said. "In the same way, the money goes further in Budapest than in Memphis."

Reti said Memphis wasn't a completely foreign place to her family. Her father worked as a sommelier on a cruise line and visited Memphis 25 years ago during a port stop in Miami.

And as for the increased competition from Uber and Lyft, Reti said that only helps Cabsolutely's business model. She said taxi companies eventually will benefit as well.

"They have high-quality competition, so they have to be better," she said. "They have to innovate and provide a better service for their customers. And I believe with Cabsolutely, they'll be able to do that."