Road infrastructure is biggest challenge, says Hailo Ireland’s Tim Arnold (video)

11 Nov 2014

Tim Arnold, Hailo's general manager for Ireland

Speaking at this year’s Web Summit in Dublin, Hailo’s general manager for Ireland Tim Arnold said that during its time at the summit, the company’s biggest challenge hasn’t been competitors, but Ireland’s road infrastructure.

With more than 20,000 people having attended this year’s Web Summit, taxi-booking service Hailo managed to secure the position of being the event’s sole transport partner for bringing attendees to and from the event in the RDS in Ballsbridge, Dublin.

Speaking to Siliconrepublic.com at the event, Arnold said of the area’s roads, “It’s been complete gridlock from 3.30pm to 7pm. If a driver is going to take 20 minutes to get from Grand Canal to the RDS, it makes it difficult to provide a really good service.”

This Web Summit had also come during a time of great change within Hailo as an international company, as only last month the company decided to pull its operations entirely from North America due to what it saw as a sector that was just too competitive.

As a result, Hailo has said it is now looking to focus on its European and Asian operations.

In terms of Ireland at least, Arnold said Hailo’s position is now to focus on developing what is one of the fastest growing of its operations.

“We’ve been here two and a half years in Dublin and we’re still acquiring customers at a rate higher than ever, so I think we were lucky that we came in when smartphone adoption was becoming mainstream.”

The Web Summit 2014: Interview with Tim Arnold of Hailo

The Web Summit 2014: Interview with Tim Arnold of Hailo

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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