Daum Kakao, South Korea’s leading search engine, said Monday its taxi app KakaoTaxi had received more than 5 million calls since its introduction in March.

According to the company, the nationwide service has 110,000 drivers and daily calls for taxis have hit 150,000 per day.

The smartphone-based taxi-hailing app was launched on March 31 after its U.S. rival Uber suspended its budget services due to resistance from local governments and taxi drivers.

Unlike Uber which uses unlicensed, crowd-sourced drivers, KakaoTaxi connects taxi drivers and riders. Passengers can call a taxi by entering their destination into the app.

“The number of drivers has exceeded that of traditional call-taxi drivers nationwide,” said a Daum Kakao official said.

The company plans to launch a premium version of the service later this year.

By Lee Ji-yoon (jylee@heraldcorp.com)