Uber for the low and middle income class

Products
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What do you think about our apps www.pickmetaxi.com? Its Uber for the low and Middle income class.

To enable these class of users use our apps, we adopted the SMS option. Commuters can text us their travel detail for us to make a request on their behalf or use either the web or the android app. When this request is made, cab drivers closest to the commuter gets an SMS about the request and replies to the SMS. The first to reply gets locked in and the mobile number of the commuter is sent to him automatically. At the same time, the commuter gets an SMS informing him/her that a driver accepted his/her request. The SMS to the commutter includes the type of vehicle, the plate number and the drivers mobile.

We are piloting in Abuja and hope to extend to many more cities soon.

Please give us your opinion

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So, whats the average taxi cost in Abuja? What is the average mobile phone used by your target market? Can your taxi men type? Will your target market be able to afford 15k tecno smart phone?

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The average taxi cost in Abuja is N500. Except for those who want to use the Android app, just any phone that can type and receive SMS is enough and the drivers do not need to type sentences, all they do is type YES and press send. So nobody really need the smartphone thing to use PickMe.

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Great idea! Worth a try.

However, will the prices be standard? Coz if I have to haggle with the taxi driver about price on arrival, it sorts of defeats the point.

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The platform allows you to select the fare by time base or you give a price you are willing to pay. Which price option you use, the driver must have agreed to the price before accepting the request.

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Oh I see.

How does this work with the SMS-only phone option?

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Hello EzekielJ Nice App. I am in Abuja too, will really like us to meet and have a Chat. Cheers

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Lol the whole point of uber is to help you escape from lower and lower middle class people you would otherwise encounter on public transportation

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Hmm, that’s a lot higher than the last time I was in Abuja. But I wouldn’t know, I haven’t been there in three years.

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I like the idea of tapping into the middle n low income class but if the average price in Abuja is N500 which I pretty much doubt, how do u make profit on an average of N500,it may be hard to scale except you have identified other income sources from the idea, Lagos is the place for you, all the best

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How do you handle payments?

Passenger and driver hash it out on their own, while you wait to collect your cut as middle man /marketplace?

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Three years ago the average is about N300. Abuja is really getting expensive by the day.

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We want to do things a little different. We went the way of fix service fee per presented irrespective of the fare.

Understandably so, Lagos is the market for us and we are making efforts to move over.

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Fare in Abuja is fairly transparent so we have fix charges base on time duration and a few destination like airport. However, we allow the commuter give a price he is willing to pay and any driver comfortable with that amount accepts the request.

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Unfortunately, you can’t request for taxi with an SMS only phone. In that case, we accept texting the travel details and we make the request on the commuters behalf.

As for the drivers, all they do is reply YES to accept the request or ignore.

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How do you handle a case where two or more requests get to a driver in quick succession, which would they be saying YES to?

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Whichever they reply.

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pretty mean way to put it lol

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@EzekielJ Please don’t tell me you are just going to up and move over to Lagos. I personally think Abuja is over ripe for some thing effective like Uber what with all the frequent one-chance incidences and all. And I’m sure you know that since the smaller buses have been banned, transportation in some areas have not been easy with the BRT.
If you need to go back to the drawing board and think some more about a scalable business model, def. do or if you need to keep trying it out till you hit that sweet spot, I encourage you but don’t give up on the idea just yet.
Lagos is the market for you yes, but you would only be going to join the crowd competing with Uber. I know Uber is here but i don’t know people raving about it just yet so by all means steal all the ideas - if they work - till you get it. It’s ok.

My two cents.

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Fair enough.

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