unLTD’s Jill Theobald meets Arnie Singh, managing director of Sheffield’s City Taxis, to find out more about the roads that led to him to running the UK’s third-largest independent private hire operator and what routes the firm is going down next …
By the time I meet up for a coffee in the Showroom café bar with Arnie Singh at 4:30pm he tells me he has spent the day in meetings in four different places across the country including Birmingham and Leicester.
Which makes sense for the busy MD of City Taxis who, since joining the firm in 2006, has seen it really go places.
Today City is one of the UK’s largest private hire taxi companies and currently the largest in the north of England. With more than 2000 vehicles, City Taxis carries out over 150,000 journeys every week across Sheffield, Rotherham, Barnsley, Chesterfield and Derby.
Employing more than 130 staff, City is also the preferred supplier to more than 1700 local companies including both Sheffield Universities and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals.
The former music teacher has seen significant growth against a backdrop of a changing industry, technology and times since taking over in 2006.
“I’m born and bred in Sheffield,” Arnie tells me, but it turns out he was also educated here, worked here, started a family here and grew his business here, too. No surprise his and the company’s mantra is ‘Go local, not global’.
“I’m very proud to be from Sheffield. I grew up in Hillsborough. My dad was a GP, my mum a nurse. I went to Birkdale School and music was my thing then I kind of fell into going to university along with everyone else.
“I studied music at University of Sheffield and while there may be some regrets about not moving away for that, I had a lot of friends who stayed in Sheffield and a lot of family here and I had a great time. I was quite sporty and really enjoyed uni life, playing a lot of football, a lot of golf.”
After leaving university, Arnie, like many, wasn’t sure which path to take.
“I played keyboards in bands. I couldn’t sing but I liked writing songs but that’s a very difficult industry to get into as is music management, you’ve got to have that big break, so I decided to do a Masters in Leisure Management at the University Management School.
“This gave me a basic grounding in lots of subjects like law, accounting, finance – it really opened my eyes to so the different areas of running a business, it was like a baby MBA (Master of Business Administration) with a focus on leisure.
“I was still thinking of music management but all roads back then were pointing to London and I wasn’t sure about that so I was at a cross roads. But I also had pressure from my parents as professionals to make my mind up on a role so I knew it was time to grow up and make a decision.”
After spotting a bursary for teaching subjects in which there was a shortage of teachers – including music – Arnie went to study for a PGCE at Huddersfield University and then became a music teacher at Tapton School.
“Tapton is an amazing school for music and I was very fortunate to join them in 2004 at a time when they had a great team in that department including the then-Head of Music Helen Cowen,” he said.
But less than two years into his teaching post, a phone call changed his course again.
“My godfather Jack Timms was a business partner with Bob Turnbull who he had founded City Taxis with. I was ultra-close to Jack – he was like a second dad to me.
“During summer holidays I would help out at what was then a firm with around 180 cars, doing a bit of answering phones and so had known the company a long time.
“Bob was looking into succession planning and gave me the opportunity to buy in and become part of City Taxis. I felt it was a much better opportunity than teaching although on paper it may not have looked like it stacked up that way.
“My mum and dad thought I was mad, as did my in-laws, and siblings, but I reassured them that I could always go back to teaching now I had my PGCE qualification.
“I got a very comprehensive overview of the business across all departments – spent a bit of time on the phones, then worked in the operating team, then with the drivers, then accounts, then marketing. I did a little bit of everything and was able to put my own mark on things.
“I spent time across the company over a number of years until Bob felt I was ready for him to step back.
“We still adopt that approach today – I’m a firm believer that you can’t tell someone what to do in a role unless you’ve done it yourself. So you may be a new starter in finance but you need to understand the nuts and bolts of how the business works so everyone starts off with a week in the call centre.
“Technology has become hugely beneficial in developing the business, although City has always constantly embraced new technology. When I was first invited to join the company was already past the pen and paper and peg board methods and starting early with technological developments enabled City to offer more work to our drivers.”
Indeed, even the nature of the call centre has changed, too – today more than half of telephonists work from home.
“We know our staff appreciate that flexibility,” said Arnie. “Homeworking also gives us the chance to reach potential employees with disabilities, who may find working in a traditional office challenging.”
Today 60 per cent of City’s bookings are made without the passenger speaking to anyone – because there’s an App for that. The App has features including a secure in-app payment facility, saving bank card details to the passenger’s account, paying via the app and getting an electronic receipt sent directly to the device.
Split Fare allows passengers to split the cost of the journey with friends and fellow passengers via their phones, plus regular journeys can be saved under ‘Favourite Places’ for speedier booking.
The App will calculate the estimated arrival time of the taxi and passengers can track their driver right to their door.
Meanwhile business owners have full access to a digital log of bookings made on account to ensure that all jobs have been authorised and validated.
“We now have a full executive offering, too,” said Arnie. “We are really pleased to be delivering a high level executive service.”
The Uber effect
Of course, any talk of technology, employment and customer service in the taxi industry leads us to the ‘U’ word.
Arnie’s first response is, perhaps, unexpected.
“Hats off to them in terms of the business model. I don’t have a major issue with Uber – I see them if anything as an enabler.
“The first year they arrived in Sheffield did not really affect us. We’d been seeing growth over the last few years of six, seven, eight per cent.
“When growth dropped to around four per cent I still thought ‘We’ll take that’, thanks to the combination of scaremongering and stories of what they’d done to the US and London market. After all, they have the resources to offer things like ‘refer a friend’.
“But our drivers have been relatively loyal, plus with City we have that whole Sheffield vibe, with it feeling like a big village. We support local charities and continue to back major events like Tramlines – over the years we have invested in our brand and our city.
“In terms of job count in year two we flatlined – there was no loss but there was no growth either as the general trend toward the Uber affect started to take hold.
“We’re losing work to students and the younger demographic as well as the transient market. The student population is much more concentrated in the city centre than it was when I was at uni and jumping in a black cab or ordering from a local firm is expensive compared with Uber – it can cost less than £3 to go a mile with them.”
One way City is trying to counter the Uber effect is through consolidation. The biggest was the merger with Mercury in June 2015 giving City Taxis a fleet of more than 1,400 drivers.
“With competition growing in the industry it made sense for us to merge in the face of that – we’d be much better and stronger as one and it has been a huge success. The majority of drivers say it’s much better and they get work across Sheffield. It’s making driving work more efficient for them and they are making more money.
“This isn’t just happening locally – it’s happening in cities across the UK. The smaller companies can’t compete against Uber and so the bigger players are becoming more acquisitional.”
But along with the acquisitions came lessons for Arnie and the team – first and foremost an investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) into the merger with Mercury on the grounds it could result in ‘a substantial lessening of competition within any market or markets in the United Kingdom for goods or services’.
“It was a quite an experience but one we take the positives out of. They took it to a stage one investigation which was expensive to defend, and I had to go to address a big panel in what was like a court setting. But Uber were causing so much damage, they didn’t think we would have control of the market share as a result and the decision was reversed.”
The CMA cleared the completed acquisition by City Taxis in October 2015 and the next step for the business was buying Ace Taxis, Barnsley’s second biggest firm in 2016, and then Chesterfield-based Club Taxis shortly after.
“The business model is to buy a decent size company, bolt on the business to ours, build it up but we’re learning all the time. With some of the smaller companies we’ve learned to pace things. On day one we would change the brand, swap the uniforms and so on but just because it’s a local company from the local area, it may well do things differently and has its own nuances, so the lesson learned is not to change things too quickly. Take your time, ensure drivers and staff are comfortable and gradually change things.
“We feel as though Sheffield will gradually lose market share and my job is to make sure we make up for that by continuing on the acquisitions trail and taking our business and brand into other areas.”
riide on
And taking the brand and business into other areas is exactly what Arnie did next – more specifically into Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool and beyond with riide.
“The App is great,” said Arnie. “But we don’t own it. I realised that if 40, 50 per cent of bookings were made through the App that could be a problem.
“Building and developing your own App is seriously expensive though, it’s like no other professional service, so I thought it would be good to share the cost with other like-minded companies and partners which led to riide.
“We have created an app by the operator for the operator, taking control of our own trade – it’s like Uber for the traditional taxi company.”
Riide is another way City Taxis is responding to current market challenges and threats like large internationals including Uber. Although as Arnie points out: “I’m a glutton for new business opportunities!”
“It’s become a much bigger project than any of us originally anticipated and we have all continued to invest in it ahead of its launch in January.”
Today the network has 18 company shareholders – all equal – and five directors, of which Arnie is one.
riide uses the icabbi software system for the dispatch technology and offers a national service with more than 22,000 vehicles using partners including Blue Line Taxis in Newcastle, Club in Manchester and Alpha in Liverpool, enabling passengers to book in more than 20 towns cities in the UK, Ireland and even the US.
It basically means that if you live in Sheffield but are visiting Manchester for a meeting you can book through the riide app, knowing you are dealing with local established companies – including City – through one contact point which is the riide app and network.
All the local area knowledge of drivers and years of experience in the private hire and taxi sector at the touch of a smartphone button.
“It means you still have that sense of using a local firm even when you’re not here, plus City has all your account details, not some third party,” said Arnie.
“You can use riide as your local taxi when you’re away from home. It also means smaller local firms can sign up to the overarching App – the firm’s name might not mean much to you in a new place when the taxi arrives but riide does.”
