MAX: Bringing dignity, safety into ‘okada’ business

However, Tayo Bamiduro and Chinedu Azodoh, co-founders of Metro Africa Xpress, are of a different opinion. They started MAX Okada, an on-demand motorcycle transport and delivery start-up to bring safety, dignity and professionalism into this mode of transportation.

Tayo Bamiduro spoke with Paul Omorogbe on the three-year journey of this company.

Is MAX a technology startup?

All of our operations are driven by technology. From driver recruitment to real-time driver tracking to the functionality of our mobile app and web platform max.ng, payments system online is managed via technology.

But there are also other operational elements in the business and since we are dealing with drivers and vehicles, we need to train the drivers and ensure that they perform optimally.

Training is a critical part of our operations, especially because we are based in a country where the educational system has failed at all levels.

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So we recruit people that can ride a motorbike, we train them if we find out that they can’t ride it properly. Some of the recruits might know how to ride a motorbike properly, but do not understand traffic rules. We also train people in that category. We can boldly say that we are also a training organisation as funny as it sounds.

Also, we equally train our white-collar employees as well. We have come to realise that if we are going to get the best out of people, they must have a stronger reason to work than their salary.

We are on a mission to make transportation safe, affordable and accessible to both motorcyclists and our commuters. Safety is one of the big issues.

People have had bad experiences with motorcycle transport in Nigeria. The reasons why these things happen are simple and can be fixed. We are investing a lot in training and human capital development

What are your services?

We use technology to make moto-taxis safe, affordable and accessible to communities in Africa, using mobile app and a web platform
MAX is using mobile technology to formalize West Africa’s fragmented and highly inefficient informal motorcycle-taxi industry. MAX mobile application provides commuters access to safe and affordable on demand motorcycle-transport service and is currently available on both Android and iOS platforms.

We also provide last mile delivery as well. For companies like Jumia, we power their last mile distribution in many parts of Lagos.

How did you come to this point as a computer science graduate?

The journey actually began when I was in university. I wanted to apply the interesting things I learnt about programming to real-life problems. I remember back in school then we had mentors in the upper class who built a software system for voting. We used the voting software for our department’s elections.

So for me, it was a question of how can I use my knowledge of programming to solve many of the problems around us? My preference was for a problem that really mattered.

There is a lot of things you can do with technology such as messaging applications, which are nice. But in a place like Nigeria or Africa, messaging applications are great, but that is not what we need right now to build the continent, or save a lot of lives.

So I looked at some of the fundamental things that will make a country work, and transportation is definitely one of them. Any country whose transportation sector is not working can not progress.

In every developed country in the world, irrespective of the amount of money or assets people own,  one of the first things you see when you get there is that they have a public transportation system that works.

When you look at Nigeria for instance, you ask how many years do we have to wait for the government to fix transportation?  Right now, there is no end in sight to it.

So for us, the question was what role can we play in solving the transportation sector challenges in Nigeria and what aspect of the sector will have the quickest impact? We figured out that we needed to do something about Motorcycle-Taxis popularly called Okada.

Most commuters use Okada. Some people use it once in a while, even though they are afraid of it, especially when they want to get to a place quickly. The second reason we chose Okada was that we didn’t want to create a luxury business. We wanted to build something that will serve the average Nigerian.

And the reality is that when you look at the income levels globally, you can see that most Nigerians can not afford normal taxis. So we decided to work on motorcycle transportation.

We decided to train the drivers, provide them with better motorcycles that meet the government requirements. In actual fact, we have gone a step above government requirements. We have 220F Bajaj Pulsar bikes and it been quite an amazing experience so far. The drivers who we also refer to as MAX Champions love the bikes. When they join us and they get on those bikes, they tell you that they are no longer Okada riders anymore

If you meet them on the streets they are usually well dressed, they have gone through professional training that takes about two weeks to complete. People love the service so much because the drivers are trained, they are courteous, they know the roads, they use technology, they use the map in the app that we built; it is just a much better experience.

When it comes to safety, in total, we have completed more than 300,000 trips, including deliveries, with no serious injuries to any of our commuters.

We are very happy about the results that we have had so far. The opportunities and challenges still remain, and we have quite a long way to go.

What are the challenges?

Right now, Lagos state alone has almost half a million Okada riders. Our fleet size is less than 1,000 right now. For us, we are still a drop in the ocean. When you look at the country as a whole, the country has over 12 million Okada riders. That’s huge!

So how do we reform this entire industry? That’s still a nut that’s a bit hard to crack. We know all the strategies that we need to put in place, and we are putting them in place. It is very achievable but it will require enormous amounts of money and investment. It will also require a bigger team to achieve that.  We have found out that in practice, it is harder to build a team than to raise money. As interesting as that sounds, there are situations where people raised financing for a business, but they couldn’t find the people to build the business.

Getting the right people, motivating them and bringing the best out of them in this environment is tough. There is a lot of work you have to do around training and orientation. You have to continue to sell the vision to them aggressively.

One of my mentors in the tech industry in Nigeria is the CEO of Venture Garden Group. He does amazing things to motivate his staff. They have weekly company-wide meetings where he restates the vision to everybody. He explains to them that we are in Nigeria but we are not a Nigerian company. What he means by that is that we don’t have the old Nigerian mentality where there is no professionalism or discipline. Rather, we are the ones influencing the environment.

On reforming the industry

I met with the motorcycle unions at the senior level, and I discovered that they were not really committed to ensuring safety.

At the end of the day, if you want to bring safety to the motorcycle-taxi industry, you might as well do it as a company. So we decided to face the industry because nobody was doing anything about the industry apart from us

What keeps you going?

The vision is very compelling, and that keeps us going. Also, we have seen the results of the work we have done so far. We have seen the impact on customers, riders and the community. We have a rider who has bought land and built his own apartment in some part of Ogun State, and this is one of the stories of empowerment which is central to what we do.

If all we wanted to do was make money there are several easier things to do to achieve this. Seeing the lives of these drivers transformed, seeing their dignity restored, seeing that we can actually make motorcycle transportation work in Lagos and across the country gives us joy.

There were a lot of things we fought initially.  People thought We were violating government rules. That is not true as we are using government approved motorcycles that are even above the requirements, and we are meeting all government regulations around safety.

Another thing that has kept us going is knowing that a lot of people need us. The fact that we are in business also means that a lot of lives have been saved.

A lot of people that have taken motorcycle rides on our platform would have taken alternative rides that might have led to accidents, and we are very sure of that. The fact that people’s lives are being preserved in running this company is very exciting for us.

The fact that what we are doing is saving lives and creating economic opportunities for people, upgrading people’s sense of dignity gives us joy.

Uplifting the dignity of labour is very important to us. It is not news that people rarely care about Okada riders. On the roads, motorists treat them anyhow. and feel that they should not be on the roads. As a Max champion, even by virtue of the motorcycle you are riding, people don’t mess with you on the road; because the motorcycles are branded and the riders wear branded t-shirts. Chinedu and I ride the motorcycles. I can do deliveries and carry passengers, same as Chinedu. So if I am asking you to do something it is because I can do it. We cannot ask our Champions to do what we cannot do and that is leadership!