Ride hailing services like Uber are becoming popular in recent times here in Bangladesh.
Some local transportation companies also want a piece of the action. The result is Pathao, Shohoz and other services.However, the company I’m going to talk today is OBHAI. It stands apart from others for two distinct reason, which will be evident shortly.
The one common tool, or an edited version of it, all of these ride services use in their app is Google Maps. Now, Dhaka is the capital and Google Maps has outlined it remarkably. Still, the city is built in such a way that, it has some places which are though outlined in the map, the addresses on that place are not defined. Those places are generally at some distance from the main highways.
As those places don’t have their address in Google Maps, while searching for them in the apps like Uber of OBHAI, you have to manually choose the specific building or road. This is troublesome as most of the time you need a ride quickly and do not have the time to manually pin the place as the destination or starting point. Also the pinning system is upsetting as you scroll the map from an unknown point and find the place manually. There’s no telling how much you may require scrolling. It’s also possible that you pinned the wrong place, which results in confusion and irritation.
My sister’s house is in such a place. It’s address is not visible in Google Maps. I have “labeled” the place on my Maps, but third party apps have no way of knowing my labels.
This is where “add a missing place” feature became life saving. Around February 2019, I had called an Uber for my sister at her home, which was problematic as the place had to be manually picked, and the driver wouldn’t know the place correctly. I searched the net to see if I could give the place a name on Google Maps, and came to know about the feature. I added it on the Maps, and what do you know! After 2 or 3 days it was searchable on these third party apps too.
OBHAI is different from the other services, and it’s only according to my opinion. OBHAI includes an Autorikshaw (more popularly known as CNG) service, which can take three people at a time. It’s cheaper than Car or Taxi, but fast enough for an emergency. The second way OBHAI is different is they have a hotline number, which can be used to call and describe the place you want the ride from.
On the day of the incident, I was at my office. My sister called me and said that she had to go to a hospital along with her Mother-in-law. She asked me to book an Uber. Fortunately, this time booking an Uber was easy! I just had to type the name that I had given to the building and the app found it instantly! However, car could not come to the place as the road was shortened due to a repairing work. I then tried OBHAI, and this app could find the place too! I picked the place and selected the destination hospital, and also called OBHAI hotline to confirm. Within 5 minutes an Autorikshaw was in front of the house ready to go.
Autorikswaws are smaller in size so the shortened road was not a problem.
Thanks to Google Maps’ add a missing place feature, that day I could find a ride for my sister and her Mother-in-law effortlessly. The trip to hospital proved to be hugely gainful and necessary.
Needless to say, I’m now adding the places I can to Google Maps that don’t have an address with it. Maps and local guides will continue to make life easier, I’m sure.