Oway Ride, Myanmar’s first ride-hailing application, celebrated its one-year anniversary and hosted a ceremony to congratulate its 1,000 drivers at Gandamar Wholesales’ Grand Ballroom in Yangon on March 31.
In just a year, the local tech company managed to train, register and partner with over 1,000 drivers in Yangon and Mandalay.
“We are very thrilled and proud to celebrate Oway Ride’s one-year anniversary along with our partnered drivers. Oway drivers are key to our success and we are grateful for the faith they put in Oway Ride. Every day, hands in hands with the drivers, we are building more job opportunities, safer streets and reliable urban transportation for Yangon and Mandalay. This celebration is our way to thank them for making our company stronger. We now have over 1,000+ drivers working with us and expect to reach 5,000 by the end of 2017,” U Nay Aung, founder and CEO of Oway Ride told the audience.
The founder announced that Oway Ride would be involved in the upcoming “Start with me” road safety campaign organized by the Yangon Region Government and the Yangon Region Hluttaw. “The start with me campaign is a great initiative to build awareness on road safety, both for drivers and pedestrians – we are very honored to be a part of this initiative” he added.
During the anniversary celebration, Oway team distributed merit-based awards and prices to their drivers. The winners of “Driver of the Year”, of the “Honesty Award” or of the “Pride of Oway Ride” were selected according to the number of rides they completed, the rates they had from customers and the attention they gave to maintaining their taxi in good condition. For the drivers who didn’t make it to the outstanding awards, Oway Ride also held a lucky draw programme.
“Oway is not just like any other company,” said Ko Min Khant an Oway driver attending the event.
“Oway staff understand the difficulties of our job and helps us get pass them, they invest in training and give us a tablet to use their app so we don’t have to worry about consuming data or roaming around to find customers – they come straight to us,” the driver added.
At this occasion, Oway team also released three new app features to the public.
The user-friendly Oway Ride mobile application is available in both Myanmar and English languages and can be downloaded from Google Play and the App Store. After signing up for a free account, customers are able to request a ride online from anywhere in Yangon and Mandalay. The application then displays nearby available taxis on a map and asks users to confirm their pickup and drop-off location. Oway Ride App finally confirms the request and provides customers with their driver’s information. Taxi fare is automatically calculated based on distance and time spent on the road and both driver and customer get to see the actual fare on their Oway Ride application. Oway Ride offers personal on-demand car services since March 2016.