Gravesend cabbie starts business to tackle driver exploitation
Trying to change the industry, Micky Harris set up his own taxi business with his late wife and while it mostly operates in London, he wants to see more users in Kent.
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00:00 A Gravesend man is trying to revolutionise cab services across the South East and London,
00:06 as he says thousands of workers and customers are exploited every day.
00:10 Mickey Harris, a taxi driver himself, has launched a business in the past couple of
00:15 years, hoping to fundamentally change the industry.
00:18 We thought that we could put an app together that would alleviate some of the exploitation
00:25 that we were seeing, so just charge the customer the correct price, pay that to the driver
00:30 and then charge a very, very minimal booking fee to the customer, it's £2, that's regulated
00:35 as well, and then we would use that to run the app and then all of the profits from that
00:40 would go to charity.
00:41 But these companies are now starting to exploit everybody by upping the prices that they charge
00:46 the customer and then pushing down the money that goes to the driver.
00:50 Mickey set up Unify London with his late wife Barbara, who passed away in July last year
00:56 after a battle with breast cancer.
00:58 It was all going very well, I mean once we actually got it all finalised off, it goes
01:02 off to the development team and you have to wait there to give them four, five, six, eight
01:05 weeks whilst they actually put it all together.
01:08 And that's when she became ill, and at that stage there, then she became very ill and
01:12 sadly she passed away to cancer as well.
01:15 Sadly when she passed away she left enough money that we could just finish the project,
01:18 push it over the line and get it launched.
01:22 He now hopes to carry on Barbara's legacy by growing the business even more, and continuing
01:27 to donate 100% of profits to charities.
01:30 Well for Unify it all started in London, that's where they see most of their customers and
01:34 most of their drivers, but now they're taking it to the streets of Kent and other surrounding
01:38 counties and regions trying to get more traction in these areas.
01:43 He now hopes to take it one step further into cities across the UK, where local charities
01:48 could benefit from the profit in these individual areas.
01:51 Eleanor Hospice is just one of the charities this business supports.
01:56 It helps support some of the work we're doing within the community.
01:59 A really great example of this is the counselling work that we do, so it's a really vital aspect
02:06 of our care and support for families.
02:08 Certainly having the support and the financial investment from Mickey's Venture is really
02:15 going to make a massive difference to continue our work.
02:17 He was also recently recognised by the Prime Minister and given a Point of Light award
02:22 for his work for the community and volunteering his time.
02:25 While being a cab driver can be a saturated market, and competing with other big names
02:30 is proving difficult, in the past few months Mickey says he's seen hundreds of new customers
02:34 coming in and he hopes the future continues to remain bright.
02:38 Sophia Akin for KMTV in Gravesend.
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