Ethiopia Taxi (ETTA), one of the first taxi-hailing service providers, has diversified into providing courier services with its latest creation, Zmall, an e-commerce and delivery application.

ETTA Solutions Plc, the tech company behind ETTA and Shekla, the music player and store, is now giving taxi services only to corporate clients and has stopped providing them to the general public. The company started a taxi-hailing service in 2016 with the hope of expanding but paused the business segment five months ago.

"Things didn't go as smooth as we had expected and pushed us to shift our attention to other software services," said Temesgen Gebrehiwot (PhD), founder and managing director of the company.

The company now focuses on Zmall, an online one-stop shop that features supermarkets, beauty supply companies and provides services for DSTV payment, concert tickets and soccer tickets. It charges 60 Br for its shortest delivery distance, one to three kilometres, and 110 Br for its longest journey, nine to 12Km.

The company invested five million Birr for Zmall to procure 75 electric bikes and train unemployed youth near the ETTA office in Kazanchis to become its employees. It plans to feature restaurants, bars and other services like electricity and water payments on its app and aims to have a fleet of 7,800 delivery motorbikes by 2021, according to Temesgen.

ETTA started the taxi service following discussions with the Ministry of Transport, but things did not go as anticipated, according to Temesgen.

"While the taxis were new and modern," Temesgen said, "the drivers weren't aware of how it worked, nor were they given any training or preparation by the government."

Since most of the taxi associations had also started signing exclusivity deals with other service providers the company had to turn to the old blue taxis in the city to deal with the shortage, which was not ideal, according to Temesgen. He believes that those cars with Code-3 license plates should not be used for taxi services but instead for business and rental purposes.