Survival and overcoming challenges in life very often translate to early mornings and late nights behind the wheel for taxi drivers. While others are fast asleep, drivers like 40-year-old Tsegaye Tesfaye, who owns a meter taxi, are out on the streets of the capital looking for passengers. He operates under Ze-Lucy Meter Taxi S.C., a consortium of 18 taxi associations.

Tsegaye has been working as a taxi driver for the past 15 years and started driving the blue taxi when he was 25. At first he was working the night shift using his friend's blue taxi, a Russian-made Lada, and he saved money through equb, a traditional means of saving in Ethiopia, for two years before he bought his own old blue cab.

"It was a good experience," he said.

However, changing times would force Tsegaye and many others like him to adapt for survival. The transport hailing and booking platform was a disruptive innovation in the country over the past five years.

Uber, the ridesharing pioneer from the United States, was first established in early 2009 and has exploded in popularity over the last decade. Companies worldwide have since looked to emulate the hugely successful service, and Ethiopia is no exception. The introduction of ZayRide, the first app-based taxi-hailing service in the country, boded ill for the signature blue cabs of Addis Abeba.

Indeed, taxi-hailing companies have proliferated since then, and many passengers now opt to use applications on their smartphones to call a cab rather than the old way of flagging down a taxi. Ease of use, standard pricing, better security features, and greater availability has drawn a demand for these companies, and they have steadily expanded their services.

There are currently 22 registered taxi-hailing companies in the city, classified into Electronic Taxi Dispatch service providers (E-Taxi) and Taxi Operation Associations. The first category consists of companies that provide electronic taxi-hailing services but do not own their own vehicles. The second group is comprised of companies that operate using their own fleets. The latter group is also free to utilise electronic systems to connect drivers to passengers.

There are currently 3,000 vehicles registered under 37 associations, according to data from the Addis Abeba Transport Bureau.

ZayRide, an E-Taxi company that was established in 2016 by Habtamu Tadesse, broke the ice for app-based taxi-hailing businesses in the nation. A year after its entry into the market, it became the first platform to launch taxi booking via application instead of text messages or phone calls.

Ride, co-founded by Samrawit Fikru in 2014 as a subsidiary of Hybrid Technology, is the current top dog in the E-Taxi business with over 16,000 vehicles engaged in ferrying passengers for the company.

Ze-Lucy Meter Taxi, an operator with its own fleet of green and yellow cabs, was founded by 18 taxi associations that came together to launch the web-based taxi-hailing platform.

Taxiye is another new addition to the business that was established last year, and many blue Lada taxis are members of the company's fleet, according to Samrawit Molla, marketing manager for the company.

Feres, an E-Taxi company, and Seregela, a taxi operating firm, are also relative newcomers who are currently gaining ground in the industry. Other taxi-hailing companies include Addis Meter, Pick Pick, Hello and Hatch Taxis.

Information technology companies are behind all of these taxi-hailing services, helping them in developing applications based on Global Positioning System (GPS) technology for their platforms and in keeping up with new advances in the field.

Tsegaye joined the evolving business three years ago after selling his old cab and buying a meter taxi.

"When the green and yellow meter taxis first appeared in the city," he said, "I heard that the old Ladas would soon be forced out and began to think of switching sides. It was a hard decision to make."

He now works with three competing app-based taxi-hailing companies: Ze-Lucy Meter Taxi, Ride and Feres, as well providing taxi service to passengers who flag him down on the road.

Pickup requests on his phone, calls from the main call centre, and old customers keep him busy.

Often, taxi drivers work with more than one taxi-hailing company. It is not uncommon for a passenger using one service to hear the driver's phone ring notifying them of a pickup request from another one of the companies during the trip.

Ride does not allow drivers to work with other taxi-hailing companies, according to Abenezer Alemu, a 25-year-old who joined the business when universities shut their doors due to the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.