Regular old taxis become cool again: Flywheel downloads up 300% in wake of Uber drama

Uber’s week of PR hell is the gift that keeps on giving to its competitors. Taxi-hailing app Flywheel says it’s seen a massive increase in downloads in the past week.

Uber’s controversy involving reporters and privacy violations spawned calls for boycotts and switching to alternative on-demand car service options. And now, in addition to Lyft’s claim of seeing a huge bump in number of rides in the past week, Flywheel has seen a 300 percent increase in app downloads, the company told VentureBeat.

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It should be noted, however, that the company wouldn’t attribute the bump to Uber or any other factor. It also declined to share both exact numbers of downloads and the exact dates during which this increase happened. Without the latter, it’s a bit difficult to fully believe this 300 percent increase, but we’ll update this post if we get the facts from Flywheel.

Unlike Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar, Flywheel makes use of the existing taxis in a city. But like its competitors, Flywheel uses the same mobile technology to let passengers hail them and pay through their smartphones. Last week, Flywheel announced a $12 million new round of funding and that Rakesh Mathur, cofounder and former chief executive of Junglee, is taking over as CEO.

Interestingly, when we took a look at Uber’s mobile app data, while its ratings seemed to have plummeted, it hasn’t affected Uber’s downloads.