MOUNT KISCO, N.Y. — Operators at KES Dispatch keep track of the company’s taxis on a legal pad. They communicate with cars using a two-way radio. Drivers navigate their journeys largely by memory.
In the age of Uber and Lyft, the company is desperate to modernize.
“I gotta change something,” said Miguel Duarte, who has run his company for 13 years. “I gotta stay ahead of the competition.”
Help is on the way. Dashride, a startup, wants to give KES Dispatch a fighting chance. It is helping Duarte modernize a dispatch system, starting with a mobile app that will let customers book, track, pay for, and rate rides.
Dashride is just one of several Web-based startups with a mission of empowering small, local businesses — often in struggling traditional industries — by equipping them with new tools and strategies.
Cups, a coffee subscription app, helps independent shops compete with giant chains like Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts. ShopKeep, a New York company, helps small businesses ring up sales, accept credit cards, e-mail receipts, or print remotely with an iPad-based system.
Shakr, a startup in Seoul and San Francisco, helps small businesses create video advertising with templates created by graphic designers who have worked on ad campaigns for major brands. And Edelweiss, a Seattle newcomer, last year introduced a networking site for independent booksellers and publishers to connect online — and regroup against Amazon.
With an explicit focus on underdogs, these startups reverse the perception that Web companies seek to put mom-and-pops out of business. They say they want to help small businesses take on corporate giants and juggernaut revolutionaries like Uber.
In return, the startups are able to tap into distinctive businesses with longstanding ties to local communities, qualities that cannot easily be recreated online. KES Dispatch is a fixture in Mount Kisco, and Duarte knows the roads by heart.
And even decidedly old-school sectors, like the livery industry, remain a huge market. There are more than 200,000 taxi and limousine services in the United States, according to IBISWorld.
“When you have disrupters like Uber and Lyft, it creates a need for the other 99 percent of the industry to update their tools, and for a company to sell them those tools,” said Jonathan Axelrod, managing director at Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, which invested $40,000 in Dashride this year.
Retail stores have perhaps been the best served by technology startups. OpenTable operates a reservation system for diners and restaurants; Yub helps brick-and-mortar merchants lure customers from the Web with promotional offers; Shopkick alerts smartphone users to deals at nearby stores.
Gilad Rotem found the indie coffee scene in his native Tel Aviv a refreshing antidote to the cookie-cutter chains. So in 2012, he founded Cups.
Customers with a monthly Cups subscription get unlimited coffee from a network of indie coffee shops, marked on an interactive map.
Edelweiss was originally an online digital catalog of print books. It also runs an analytics service to allow booksellers to compare their sales anonymously with their peers, giving them access to a vast amount of sales and marketing data.
Its social network, Edelweiss Community, allows independent bookshops to share reviews of titles and to exchange trade tips and offer support.