▲ Coactus, the social venture managing Goyohan Taxi, was selected as a finalist in Dubai Expo Live 2020.

/photography from Coactus

On August 23rd, Coactus, the social venture that was founded by Donggukians, was selected as one of the finalists with Goyohan Taxi service in Expo Live Innovation Impact Grant Program (LIGP). This program annually awards creative solutions with social innovative technology, and this year was the first time that Korean company was selected, being in 25 among four thousands of participants! So we interviewed the members of Coactus to listen to their stories of Goyohan Taxi service.

▲ From the left is Song Min-pyo(CEO), Kang Dong-sub, Noh Jung-bin, Lee Jun-ho.

/photography from Coactus

Q. Would you please introduce Goyohan Taxi?

A. Goyohan (means ‘silent’ in Korean) Taxi is a taxi service that is driven by hearing-impaired people. We educate them so that they can be qualified to become taxi drivers, and also have developed an application to help them communicate with passengers well. Now, 13 drivers are running Goyohan Taxi in Korea, including Seoul, Gyeonggi, and Gyeongju district.

Q. What motivated you to make this service?

A. Goyohan Taxi project began from our school club, Enactus, which takes entrepreneurial action to solve social problems. Preparing for our own project, we found that employment rate of hearing-impaired people was much lower than other disabled people. Since it was difficult for them to communicate with others, they couldn’t work well especially in the area which requires communication skills. Inspired by the case of the global taxi company Uber, we had decided our mission to expand hearing-impaired people’s job opportunity as taxi drivers in Korea, and help them adjust to their work.

Q. How can we, as a customer, use Goyohan Taxi?

A. When you take Goyohan Taxi, at first, you can register your destination with a tablet PC and then it is directly sent to the driver’s tablet PC. If you have anything to talk to the driver, for example, if you want to open the window or turn on the radio, you don’t have to worry. The application will convert your voice, handwriting, or texting into message and send it to the driver. And when you get off the taxi, you can show your detailed destination and select your payment method only by clicking the button on the screen.

▲ A hearing-impaired taxi driver of Goyohan Taxi is standing next to his taxi.

/photography from Coactus.

Q. When is your most memorable moment with Goyohan Taxi?

A. When we prototyped our application before launching the service, we had met a hearing-impaired person. He said, “Thank you for developing such an application. When this service is released in the market, I will surely become a driver of Goyohan Taxi.” Thanks to this word, we could be confidence in our service and keep up the stream on developing our application.

Q. Did you have any difficulties managing Goyohan Taxi? How did you overcome it?

A. First of all, there were some passengers who were repulsed by the hearing-impaired taxi drivers and they even got off the taxi as soon as they got on it. Such behavior left deep scars to the drivers but it seemed we had nothing to do for them. However, we constantly tried to improve people’s perception about Goyohan Taxi. Thanks to these efforts, we had a glorious opportunity to have president Moon to board on our taxi in the exhibition.

Also, we have seen many hearing-impaired people facing difficulties on acquiring qualification test because of their poor literacy. In order to help them get a license, we have developed customized education program with Korea Employment Agency for Persons with Disabilities (KEAD).

Q. What are your plans for this year?

A. We are planning to increase the number of the drivers, at least 50 to 100, this year. With such a physical increase, we are also going to launch several optional services in our application. One is translation service. It will enable international passengers to take Goyohan Taxi, too. And we will also load call taxi service. Additionally, in the long term, we are going to reduce obstacles for more hearing-impaired people to get opportunity to become taxi drivers!

To get more information of Goyohan Taxi, please click here! (http://www.goyohantaxi.com/)

Kim Min-ji Reporter

rlaalswl5460@dongguk.edu