Ridesharing is a new trend that is fast growing through technology in the world. Now we have companies like Uber, Bolt (formerly known as Taxify), and Lyft making great sales from being the forerunners of this wonderful technology. What do we mean by ridesharing exactly? Ridesharing implies that you get to share a car with someone who is going your way to take them to their destination.
A company like Uber is now available in over 60 countries, and more than in 600 cities with about 14 million Uber trips completed every day. They have also completed over 10 billion trips worldwide, and in 2018 alone they made a total sum of 4 trillion NairaNaira. Just in Nigeria alone, Uber has over 10,000 drivers with about 267,000 monthly passenger base in 2018.
All these and more make you realize that the ridesharing business is doing very well. Now the question is, how do you exactly get on board. Bear in mind that there are different aspects of the business for an on-demand or rideshare business. Therefore, know the one you plan on joining. Do you want to be the rider/customer in ridesharing?
There are other examples of rideshare niches; apps like GrubHub, instacart, doordash, provide deliveries between shoppers and merchants. You also have the bike hailing app options which serves as another niche. The apps include Bird, Gokada, Max.ng.
Max and Gokada are indigenous apps that have carved a name for themselves in the ride-hailing industry.
Photo by Victor Avdeev on Unsplash
However, you can decide to deviate from the norm and build your own app that focuses on laundry, pharmaceutical, petrol deliveries and so on. But note that the success of the app might be determined by what the established players have put in motion wrongly or what they aren’t doing at all.
Related: check out this definitive guide on how to grow a successful transportation business prepared by Onde.
At the point of identifying what you want to do, you are to carry out a market study. The market study should include finding out if people need the services you’re about to render, do you have any chance of succeeding, is it a profitable venture, and more importantly will the target customers pay for it?
Another factor to consider is the importance of a quality app developer that’s going to build the app. This is significant to the progress of your venture as it is the very first thing that your customers come in contact with.
Your app cannot afford to be bad or have silly mistakes, as that might make or mar the entire business. For instance, the Uber app has used over 360 million Naira to develop and maintain the app. Do not fret; you do not have to spend that much. Now we have different app development companies that can either build from the scratch or give you a pre-built option for a good price.
Once the app is set and ready for use, get a workspace where you will be actively working on. You can either choose to get a standalone office or shared workspace like Capital Square, Ventures Platform Work Bay, Workstation, etc.
After all, these are set, recruiting drivers is the next thing. Make sure you carefully choose your drivers as they are very instrumental to the growth and progress of your ridesharing venture. Teach your drivers how to deal with customers and other basic etiquettes of business. Your customers are very important too. You can offer incentives to both your drivers and the customers to get loyalty from them. Drivers mean your customers can get to their destination, customers mean payment, and so you have to take care of both.
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