A few months ago, we published a Q&A with Rodney Jackson Cole of Taxi
Park, a new startup in Lagos that aimed to bring the mobile taxi
booking experience made popular globally by the United States' Uber
taxi booking service to Nigeria. We were impressed with the startups'
execution within a short period of time and the learnings they were
accumulating from their first set of users. However, Taxi Park's
launch appears to have served as a precursor to what seems to be a
wave of tech companies increasingly interested in the taxi booking
space in Africa. A few days ago, German incubator, Rocket Internet
revealed that it will be launching its taxi booking service, Easy Taxi
in Africa, starting with Nigeria. At the same time, Uber appears to be
preparing for an Africa launch in Kenya and South Africa. The Silicon
Valley based startup is currently hiring for a variety of positions in
Nairobi and Johannesburg ranging from General Managers to Community
Managers.
Naturally, our interest was piqued when we were recently informed by
the Taxi Park team that they had shut down their young company to
launch another – Tranzit.ng. What is Tranzit and why did the team shut
down their previous startup, Taxi Park so quickly? We caught up once
more with Rodney Jackson Cole of the soon to be launched startup,
Tranzit.ng.
Q: Welcome again to CP-Africa. Can you tell us more about your new
service, Tranzit.ng?
RJC: Tranzit is a free web and mobile taxi booking service that also
recommends interesting places and events around you based on your
location.
It's a new service from the creators of TaxiPark, Rodney Jackson-Cole,
Muyiwa Boris and Ugochi Ugbomeh.
Q:Why the change in direction? Why did you choose to shut down TaxiPark?
RJC: The change in direction was borne out of a desire to better serve
our steadily growing database of clients. Part of the learnings we
took from our Taxi Park experience was that it was not correctly
positioned to grow the way we wanted it to.
Unlike TaxiPark, Tranzit is able to "generate" rides that would
otherwise not have happened. It will also be more fun and there's more
to come.
Q: It appears that in addition to Tranzit's discovery elements, it
still has at its core Taxi Park's taxi booking elements? Why have you
preserved these elements? Also, do you see Tranzit as a competitor to
Easy Taxi?
RJC: Tranzit is still a Taxi booking service, its just on steroids.
We've preserved the core booking features because this is the primary
means of serving our passenger base. We have, however, rebuilt the
booking engine from scratch to be able to scale with our growth, and
meet current and emerging market requirements. Since Tranzit and Easy
Taxi serve similar purposes by providing an e-taxi booking service, we
are competitors, but we also see the dynamic playing out as
complimentary, as the market will be better informed about a different
and better means of booking taxi service.
Q: What are your thoughts on Rocket Internet's recently announced taxi
booking service, Easy Taxi? Do you think Taxi Park provided some
validation about the business potential in taxi booking in Nigeria? If
so, how?
RJC: Yes, over 7 months ago, we were in talks with Rocket Internet
about a possible investment in TaxiPark, and may have inadvertently
educated them about the taxi market when we shared our challenges and
how we planned to solve the "Nigerian" Taxi problem, which is quite
frankly different from what you'll find in other parts of the world.
They seemed quite impressed with what we were doing. We therefore see
their entry into the market not only as a validation of the size of
the taxi market opportunity, but also of our operating model.
More so, being one of the top 14 finalists for the seedstar world
competition that took place in Nigeria and winning the MWWA (Mobile
Web West Africa) 2013 competition, further validated our approach to
the Nigerian market in the eyes of investors and Nigerian consumers.
Q: Do you plan to raise money to fund Tranzit's long term growth?
RJC: We recently raised a multi-phased fund round, the first phase of
investment is complete, our valuation was generous and exceeded our
expectations when we set out, our investor(s) are very committed to
Tranzit for the long haul and extremely excited about its prospects.
We are however, contractually obligated to keep the fine details of
the transaction confidential until the next phase is concluded.
Q: What key learning did you gain from the Taxi Park experience?
RJC: The Taxi Park experience was great, but it wasn't easy, we had to
run lean, for the first 6 months, we didn't have any employees, we did
everything ourselves as we couldn't afford to pay salaries.
We however made some silly mistakes when it came to the legal side of
things, we ignored non-disclosure agreements and shared a lot of
information with our would be competitors who at the time posed as
investors.
Q: Any final words on your startup experience thus far?
RJC: Like I said above, it is a lot of hard work and making wise
decisions. Young startups should sometimes take advice from
experienced business people who they usually have around them.
Developing a tech solution and running a business are entirely
different expeditions.
Source: Cp-africa
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