Technological advancement is must for an industry to grow. The tech ecosystem in Pakistan has witnessed a significant growth in past few years. The lives of Pakistani people are getting automated or I would rather say that the whole living culture is getting automated. 

Online shopping has been getting really popular in Pakistan for quite some time now but If you turn back the pages and go a few years back, people were reluctant to shop online and most of them considered online shopping a scam but the picture is totally different now.

Recently in Pakistan, On-demand rides are getting very popular day by day. International companies like Uber and Careem came to Pakistan and being appreciated by masses. There are a huge number of people using Uber and Careem everyday in Pakistan. 

Now, A Pakistani tech startup 'NEXT', powered by Devicebee Technologies, has launched a similar service in Pakistan starting from Lahore city. NEXT is newest in the field of on-demand ride system which is locally developed by the people of Pakistan for the people of Pakistan. NEXT claims to provide most competitive pricing and innovative service to its customers. Lets take a look at their pricing structure:

Base fare: Rs 95

Per Km: Rs 12.5

Cancellation fee: Rs 150

Minimum fare: Rs 125

Now let’s take a look at the comparison of NEXT with other on-demand ride service providers.

One more thing that I did was to compare the estimated fares of traveling within Lahore on both the platforms (NEXT and Uber) and the results were quite unexpected. You will understand by looking at the following screenshots.

The one thing that definitely makes NEXT different from both Uber and Careem is ‘No Surge Pricing’. What is Surge Pricing? Surge rates are actually the extra charges that appears when there is a high demand of car rides in a particular area indicating a peak in demand. NEXT claims to provide premium services at fair and transparent rates. 

This is indeed a very healthy competition between such companies which will prove to be very fruitful for Pakistan’s tech ecosystem.