Podcast transcript: Episode 18- Tech and Transport: Trips to the future

Transcript

Host: Hello, and welcome to the experience pod. My name is Chiwueze Ihebuzor, the experience pod is a 30 Minute one-on-one interviewer-led podcast that discusses the adoption and utilisation of relevant emerging technologies and trends for impact oriented professionals, researchers, developers and students who demand realistic and thought provoking perspectives on the opportunities and challenges presented by these phenomena in our unique environment. 

Rapid metropolitan growth in Nigeria, particularly in Lagos has unfortunately created a lot of urban transportation challenges. In the past, most people in Lagos relied on thousands of mini buses or Danfos as we like to call them as well as Keke’s  to get around. These limited options combined with widespread congestion made commuting for the average Lagosian slow, unreliable and a very stressful endeavour. Things started changing a bit in 2008, when Lagos introduced BRT. And according to a 2017 World Bank report, BRT’s successfully reduced journey time for over 200,000 commuters by 15 minutes. 

Now with the democratisation of technology, ride-hailing has also been a strong saving grace for the transport industry. However, this increased transport convenience has seen benefits in the taxi space. Treepz is looking to change all of that. Now Treepz, previously known as Plentywaka is a ride hailing startup setting itself apart from other ride hailing players by tapping into the mass transit space. The startup aims to tackle Nigeria's age-old mass transit problems on reliability and inconvenience by giving people the opportunity to hail buses around their schedule. And its core value proposition is really around providing convenience, security and predictability for commuters. 

Now to talk a bit more about the mass transit space, ride-hailing, and basically his thoughts around driving industry wide disruption and innovation for the transportation space. I'd like to welcome the co-founder and CEO of Treepz Mr. Akuma.

Akuma: Yeah, thanks a lot. Thanks for having me here. I am excited to be on your podcast.

Host: Fantastic. Fantastic. We're happy to have you here. So we'll just get started very quickly. So to start, we usually ask our guests to begin, you know, we'd like a brief background of the organisation and what they do. So in one or two sentences, how would you describe what Treepz does? And what's distinct about your operations? Tell us briefly about that.

Akuma: All right, thanks a lot. So Treepz is a bus-hailing platform, we're building the largest shared mobility platform in Africa. But we started out with Nigeria. Currently, with our expansion into Ghana, it's now maybe the largest shared mobility platform in West Africa. What we've decided to do is create a mobile app, to give people a better experience of commuting within cities, across cities and providing employees of organisations the option to get shared mobility platforms like mini vans or buses in a very conducive and safe manner.

In the last two years, since we've started out our operations, we've moved over half a million people using our mobile app. And that cuts across providing in-city service that we refer to as daily trips in cities like Lagos, a bit of that in the city like Abuja. And just recently, we started out in Accra in Ghana, while also providing travel trips, for people that want to move across cities. So if you want to go from Lagos to Abuja, you want to go from Abuja to Sokoto. You're able to get on the travel trips side of our mobile app. And that allows you to select different bus options from major bus operators, like GUO, Libra or Efex.

Just generally different bus operators that provide conducive service to customers, you can now do that on the mobile app and move between cities. So this has been our experience in the last two years. And we're truly excited about where we find ourselves because right now I think we're leading the pack of individuals that are looking at creating solutions in the shared mobility style of having an impact on transportation generally.

Host: Wow, fantastic. It sounds like you guys are doing a whole lot. Just a quick one, when we heard this the name change, I mean, we just thought we had to sort of plug this into the script. And we wanted to just find out what sort of led that transition from Plentywaka, because I think we were kind of attached to Plentywaka to Treepz. What sort of inspired this change?

Akuma: I mean, it was an emotional process, if I’ll put it in layman's words. Right? So I mean, the word Waka means movement in many parts of Nigeria. But also in some parts of Nigeria, the word Waka means something else altogether? Right. When we started out with Plentywaka, we wanted to give people different ways of moving within cities and across cities. But very quickly, we started growing fast. And we found the opportunity to do the same in other markets, to replicate our model in those markets. 

As we looked across Africa, and started looking at the options to do this in other markets, we noticed that the word Waka also meant other things away from movement. And it was going to require us doing a lot of explanations, and trying to manage consumer behaviour or consumer perception of the brand Plentywaka from a place where we had to educate them about what we were really doing with Plentywaka. So what we decided to just do was to change it, and we looked within and said, hey, what is the most common thing that people do in Plentywaka, it's taking trips.

Whether it’s trips within cities or trips across countries. And so trips took us some time, we've been deliberating on it for about five months. But eventually, we landed on the name Treepz, and it kind of embodies everything that we want the new Plentywaka to be. Now with Treepz, you're able to relate with trips, whether you're a Nigerian or you're an American, or you're from the UK, you can understand what Treepz is doing. And it has that very cool feel to the name that makes it even more appealing to people generally. 

So that influenced the name change. And because we're going Pan African with what we're doing in Treepz, the name change needed to happen quickly so that in our expansion plans, it's a lot more easier for us to handle that with us being at the size we are today, than really going so big and then having to make a change later in the future.

Host: Fantastic, I like this a lot. So this sounds like this decision wasn't just a personal thing. It was not like somebody just woke up and just decided, hey, let's call it Treepz. It's actually more to speak to your expansion goals and being able to immediately communicate what you do just by mentioning your name to your customers. 

Akuma: Exactly.

Host: That makes a whole lot of sense. And I think what you said around Waka meaning different things, we didn't actually consider that. I mean, I think we're just thinking from our own side. And we just thought, yeah, but let's keep it Nigerian. But I think what you've said around the meaning is also very important as well. I mean, I'm sure we all know what Waka means to the average, Nigerian, you know, different meanings and how it can be sort of misinterpreted. So that's a very interesting story. Thanks for that, Onyeka. We appreciate that explanation. 

Akuma: Sure. 

Host: So let's talk a bit more about what led you to believing that there was a market for this. Like what happened? I mean, I know obviously, from your Konga days or your Wakanow days, obviously, you've been around the startup community for a while now. But I'm just wondering what made you sort of say, hmm, there's a market here when there's nobody doing anything. When was that aha moment?

Akuma: My aha moment was in 2009. I felt there were three sectors for me that if one was able to play in using technology, it would have a tremendous impact on millions of people's lives. The three sectors for me, I wanted to pay attention to were agriculture, people need to eat everyday, transportation, people need to move around everyday and people needed where to stay on a daily basis. So I paid attention to these three sectors closely, while working for other people's firms and trying to find how technology will have an impact in these three sectors. 

So it started out for me with agriculture, with Farmcrowdy. And then later on, I got heavily invested in real estate with RentSmallSmall. And so I continued to pay attention to the third sector being transportation, but I wanted to make sure I found the right mix for that. That's where it started for me. And today, I mean, 2019, I went out of the country to speak at an event and I was coming back. And pretty much what happened was, I had to get on different forms of transportation to make a meeting, somewhere in Lagos. And then what happened was, I saw that for me to make several meetings, I needed to take two bikes that day, I needed to take a boat ride that day, I needed to board a bus that day. 

Now of all of these things, the bus was the most shocking or fatal. And that was because I found myself in a place where while I was dealing with a bus, I had to hold the door of the bus from falling off. And I was pretty scared about the experience. And I called my friend Johnny, who is now a co-founder in Treepz. And he told me, see there are over 9 million Nigerians in Lagos that have to use a bus on a daily basis. And that is the experience they go through. If you put on your white shirt and red tie, like I see you in your pictures looking like right now. And you couldn't afford an Uber ride on a daily basis and you didn't want to take bikes, you're stuck with using these buses. 

And some of these buses are, what, 25-30 years old buses. And that experience shocked me and I said, hey, we have to find a way of changing this. And we pretty much had to get through the idea, and assembled the other two guys on the team, Afolabi and John Shaibu. And together, we started building this concept of creating a solution that will give people better ways of commuting within cities. That was how it started for us. And we went live September 16 2019. And so far, it's been an exciting journey. We've had very great people on the team with us. And we're very, very happy about the progress we've made.

Host: Fantastic. Thanks. So it's interesting, you said something that actually applies to almost everyone who uses a bus. But I guess not all of us have actually gone that extra mile to actually do something about it. So it's great to hear that you're doing something about it. So just a message to all aspiring founders out there. If you’ve not had to go for a meeting, and if you've not had to enter two bikes, a Bolt and a Bus, then maybe you should check where you are going for your meeting. Okay, nice one. 

Okay, let's talk a bit more about your offering. So you currently offer inter city travel. And you also do intra state travel, you know, and also obviously, the movement of employees as well. So what have you noticed? Are there any differences in these markets, or any patterns or any things that are sort of interesting that jumped out right at you that you probably wouldn't have noticed from the onset. So how do these different segments of your markets play?

Akumah: For intra-city, which is what we started out Treepz as. What we've noticed is that there's a huge demand of people that need that service. And for us, it's finding ways of increasing our supply, to provide people with more options for them to commute. We've noticed that no matter how much you spend on your fleet size, there's always a huge demand for people that want that service. So it's something that even with limited marketing, we're seeing a lot of traction for our efforts or daily trips. Because people want to go to work every morning, and you have so many moving on a day to day basis. 

Whether you're going to work or going to the market, or where they just earn their daily bread, we move a lot in this part of the world. And then on the city to city side, which is what we call travel trips, which builds an aggregator for the different bus operators to start providing better customer service to customers, to start providing options to customers. Now a customer can go on our Treepz app, and they're able to book for a seat. Something that wasn't possible in the past, they're able to pay for the service of taking a bus ride from one city to the other in a seamless manner from the comfort of their homes. They are able to book up to seven days ahead of that trip. And they get to the bus park, there is no cash exchange, it's all done digitally, it's all done virtually. 

They show their online tickets using the QR code. And when they get on that trip, they're able to provide customer feedback, rate their service of the bus operator. And get these bus operators to step up their service, if they are not doing well or get good commendations for the service they provide. They're able to compare the pricing for different bus operators offering the same service and can make an informed decision about who they want to experience that travel trip with. 

So I think it's in that act, we've seen a lot of excitement. I think the last one is also how corporations now do not have to bother buying staff bosses for their employees, they can now rent their buses from trips. And we offer that corporate trip service to their employees, and their employees get comfortable rides across the city. So I think that experience just continues to open up different opportunities for us to find new ways of providing services to our customers.

Host: Wow. So this actually leads me nicely to my next question. So I mean, obviously we've done some research, I hope these numbers are still relevant. So we noted that you have about 986 vehicles. So we just really want to understand how that works. Because now you've mentioned that you have a platform for the city to city travel where that sort of aggregates all transporters. So the question here is, do you own all of these 986 vehicles? What's the ownership structure? Or are you partnering with anyone to do that? How does it work from an ownership of the asset perspective? Do you own everything? Or is it a shared ownership model?

Akumah: No. So it's typical of what you have in the shared mobility space. What we've done is we've provided the option for different stakeholders to bring their vehicles on our platform, earning up to 90% of the ticket cost for every purchase that happens.

Host: Up to 90%, did you just say up to 90%? I wanted to confirm.

Akumah: Yeah, up to 90% commission. Though I mean, of the ticket cost, we keep 10% for our work done. We make a decent return on investment. So you have one pool of people that bring vehicles on our platform to do this. And to that extent, you see them excited about the opportunity to make money on Treepz as a result of their vehicles riding on our platform. And then on the other hand, we have bus operators that are now bringing the fleet of vehicles that they have in their own pool on Treepz to now connect people to over 20 cities across Nigeria with travel trips. 

So you have bus operators like Libra that have over 200 vehicles in their fleet. They've onboarded that on our platform to open up the channel for people to order for city to city service or interstate service on the Treepz app, connecting them to over, I think Libra has about six cities they connect people to. GUO has about 17 cities they connect people to. So they just onboard their fleet on our platform, and they get customers through us. 

Host: Fantastic.

Akumah: That is ideally the kind of relationship we have with bus operators, or people that are investing on our platform. 

Host: Okay, so I mean, the next question is, then how do you sort of ensure the quality? I mean, what has it been like from a quality of service perspective. So do you get people obviously, using your partners or, you know, using some of their services, and then maybe if they have a challenge, and they route that experience, or that bad customer service back to Treepz. I don't know how you sort of avoid that, or what you have in place to sort of guard against that sort of, will I say, customer service, that is really not your fault. It's actually maybe the fault of one of your service providers. How do you vet and how do you assess that, you know, the quality of service being rendered is of the highest standard?

Akumah: So what we do is we get a lot of customer feedback. Once the customer is getting on a trip, they have different tools that they can use to send feedback to us. Whether as a customer service form on the app, or just rating the right, or just calling out phone lines to give us feedback about what the experience was like using Treepz. So from the daily trips level, and we get this feedback, we can act on it, within 24 hours, take the necessary actions to make sure that if it is a good experience, more people experience that and if it's a challenging experience, we make the necessary changes to make sure that people do not experience that any longer. 

From the travel trip side, we're able to provide feedback. And this has been something that has excited a lot of the bus operators we've onboarded on our platform. They get feedback from our customers that have used their service on our platform, and they are able to make adjustments and are able to make changes. And they know that if they do not make changes, we've had bus operators that we've had to turn off on our app because consistently, we've had very bad reviews about their service. So that way, we create that check and balance and we make these bus operators understand how to improve on their services as a result of the customer engagement that happens on our app.

Host: Wow, very good. So apart from even solving the problem of mobility, you’re also improving the services. Well done. So obviously, with COVID having an impact on movement and things like that. Just very quickly, I mean, what was the impact for Treepz? And how did you guys sort of manoeuvre that period. I mean, I know we're still in the third wave in quote, but people are sort of moving around more, a bit freely. But I'm talking about, you know, during the heart of lockdown, when there was pretty much no movement. Just curious to know how you guys sort of maintained the top of mind and awareness for your users.

Akumah: So it was a very difficult time for our business. I'll be very frank with you. We're just six months old into it, we felt we're on a rocket ship. Within the first six months, we have moved 100,000 people. We celebrated on the 16th of March and we felt like things were just about to take off. And then on the 28th of March, four days after that, we had to shut down operations. And we hadn't raised any funding apart from the founders' money coming into the platform. So it became very difficult sustaining things over time. And I mean, we had to literally shut down operations to understand the scenario of things first before considering coming back into the market, things got really hard. And so at some point, we took out the seeds of some Vegas that we had, and turn those vehicles into vehicles that should move food supply. So whether it's food items or medical supplies across the city to just add some some revenue to keep keep people in the period. Nissan we got got approval to start moving 50% capacity 70% capacity after like three to five months. And as soon as we got that back on the road went out to raise for them so that we could find ourselves in that situation again. Yeah, so we did our precede. And luckily for us towards the end of the year we got into text us to run to protect us allowed us to then pitch to more investors and then just over a month ago were able to close our seed round for we wanted to Raise just about 800k, we ended up raising $1.3 million as a result of the interest we built with trips. So we just closed that around now. And for us, it's just continue to grow and scale and find more opportunities to deploy capital and open up opportunities for people to experience more better transportation service. If God forbid, there's another scenario like that that comes in the future. I think we're better prepared now as a business for it.

Fantastic. Thanks. Thanks for that. Okay, so let's move on quickly. So according to insights to impact Africa, I mean, which is like Africa's digital platform that sort of has a database of all businesses performance over a period of time. So they've said that, obviously, the ride hailing market is huge, and it has obviously grown significantly, I think, in 2014, we had just two ride hailing companies. And by 2019, we had about 17. So that growth was quick, but a lot of startups are still facing or people operating in this space are facing challenges, domestic challenges around regulations, permits, you know, and also things around security, bad road networks, and things like that. So how are you guys navigating all of this, especially the regulatory challenges? And, you know, you're also competing with the local sort of traditional, you know, typical downfall bosses? I mean, how do you guys sort of position yourself with against them? And how do you sort of position yourself to respond to any sort of threat that might come from that side?

Yeah, I think for all ride hailing companies, I mean, even the big ones like Uber and boats, they still dealing with regulatory issues when different markets, I think it's once you bring disruption into a space that has over 100 years experience of 100 years experience of doing it a certain way, I want to disrupt that you will face these kinds of challenges. So I don't think it's unique to just businesses in Africa to deal with this, or businesses in Nigeria to deal with this when it comes to regulation in the transportation space, or writing in space. Specifically, I think it's something that all the players are dealing with. But for us, what we've learned is relationship matters, we constantly kept a very good relationship with the stakeholders in the transportation space, whereas government, or the unregistered regulator, or I mean, every angle that we need to deal with a stakeholder that we know is going to be responsible for the success of our business. By allowing us to thrive and continue to grow. We've kept those relationships warm, we constantly provide updates, we constantly keeping them abreast of our plans way ahead of the moves we want to make. They're aware of some of these things we're doing. And now what we're seeing is that they are reciprocating with bringing us to the table to have conversations around how we craft out the difference. So when trip started out, in 2018, no one had created regulation for boss hailing platforms were the first platform that got that regulation in place. And they had to create that because of trips. Now we understood that there may be one or two other players are now coming and trying to they're going to maybe benefit from the work we've been able to do, we're happy to be trailblazers, we're happy to lead the pack, we're happy to go to places that others haven't gone to, in order to open up because at the end of the day, it's making life better for the typical African that public transportation is the only way for them to move across cities. So we're happy to do that. And we deal with it on a day to day basis. But I think the key for us is relationships now coming to things like security and bandwidth. I mean, these are things that are constant, if one looks at the challenges we have to deal with, or you'd say, you're not going to create a solution. Because of that, then we will do and I believe everybody has their own pitch to play on. I'm creating solutions right now for people to move from place to place boss of the boss of city city, that's my own path to play with my team. I think it's somebody else's own part to play with taking on security challenges, and someone else's part to play with taking on the roads. But together, we all do our own parts, and we just make transportation data for people. I think that's the way I I tend to see those challenges that present what we need to stop us from doing what we need to do. No.

Fantastic. I think it's, you said some very important things. Yeah. And I think from a PwC perspective, these also aligned with our, you know, our mission, which is really around solving important problems and building trust. And we know that it's not one person can solve the problems alone. It's a collective effort to have effort from intrapreneurs effort from even users of your service effort from the government as well. So I think that's something that we thoroughly agree with you on. Okay. So I mean, you've sort of mentioned it already. We were going to bring it up your recent seed raise. In fact, when, you know, I think by the time we reached out for the podcast, I don't think it was announced at that point. So when we then had that you had raised about $1.3 million. We're like, wow, this is perfect timing to talk to these guys. We will also know that you sort of set up operations in Canada. You've also sort of entered Ghana by acquiring stamp boss, which is also a mobility company in Ghana as well. We know that you've also partnered more recently with the view to help it's out of interested transport. Now my question is what's really driving your sort of your choices or your decisions on expansion from a domestic and international perspective? What how do you identify like, okay, yes. Can I make sense? Let's go into Ghana? Or actually Canada, let's let's go into Canada. I mean, I think that Canada one really took a lot of people aback, because I'm like, Okay, now a lot of people would go into a developed market with a solution from a developing market, so to speak. But I mean, obviously, you would know better, you know, having done the research and all that, we just want to get a sense of what what informs your strategy or your expansion decision?

So yeah, good questions. I appreciate those questions. So I can explain a bit more. Our expansion plan is simple. We want to build the largest shared mobility platform in Africa, Africa has, what 54 countries, right, and we're currently operating out of Nigeria, we've currently operates out of Nigeria and Ghana. And very quickly, I think that's going to go into many other African countries. And there'll be more details on that, as we move forward, our expansion plan will see us either acquire businesses from a place where we acquire them to, to expand it to that region, because of the technical know how to people in the team, if we find a very good team that has a good mix with with our team. And we feel like we can easily do this together, or we send our people into those places to go and start out these days. Is there based on the plan we have across the continent? What informed Canada? So when we're going to text us Toronto, which is based in Canada, we decided to, to set up our headquarters here from a business development perspective.

It is your headquarters. I didn't read that wrongly. I thought I read it wrong.

No, no, it's interesting business development perspective, because for investment conversations, over 80 to 90% of our investors are based in North America, it means just good sense for us to be close to them. Absolutely. The business environment perspectives. And then also from a technology perspective, some of the technical know how we were deploying on trips, a lot of it was coming from North America as well. And so for those two main reasons, we decided to set out our shop fair, and to allow us to continue to have access to more investors and technology to grow the business. But the goal is to build what we're building right now on the African continent focused on just expanding into all the African regions, in order to give them better service. Because we use buses more in Africa than almost any other I think the only other place that they use buses a lot more in Asia. But we do use a lot of buses here in Africa. And it's not from a place of luxuries a place of need for an African use. So we just made so much sense to do this year. And we have a very good understanding of the market here. So our goals in growing our business into the future is one that will see us replicating what we've done in Nigeria, in Ghana, in other African countries across western East Africa, and then South and North Africa.

Fantastic. Okay, we're almost coming to an end now just rounding up a few more questions to go. So you touched on security. And I think you made a valid point there around, you know, everybody has a role to play. And we know that obviously, the state of security right now could be better in the country. But what about in passenger security? So I mean, you hear all sorts of stories from like, maybe, you know, setting ride hailing companies and you hear sometimes drivers are sort of abusive drivers are violent. And even, you know, not just drivers, in some cases the other way around. So yeah, passengers even abused drivers or, you know, some, in some cases, they don't want to pay or they offer some sort of exchange, you know, rather than rather than making payment at these challenges that you guys also face off? And if you do, then what's the strategy around sort of dealing with them? And again, what's the worst case you had around these sort of issues, as anyone sort of complained some of the drivers or is it more from the passenger side, people being unruly when they get on your vehicles?

Okay, so yes, this challenge is presented themselves consistently on a day to day basis, they're dealing with people, real people, and everyone is influenced by their environment by what they are dealing with on a day to day basis, and they can take that on anyone are on the road, I mean, if seen roadway in Lagos city like this everyday, but for us in trips, I think we've been able to kind of hedge against some of the risks coming from this angle you've just pointed one is we don't do cash payments. So if you're taking a trip with trips, you will be paying through your mobile wallet, you'll be paying through the app. So there is no cash payment, so that space for fraud or fraudulent activities happening. When it comes to cash, it's eliminated. The second thing is that when you order for bots on trips, your seat is kept for you or do you make the trip? But if you don't make the trip, there's a no show fee. So everyone that makes an order on the trips app knows that they will have their seats kept for the day. They see the kind of vehicle that if ordered for they see the name of the driver, they have contact lenses of who is going to be, I mean, something like we may be adding also is how they were able to have an idea of who is on the bus before they get on the bus. So that provides just predictability, but first some form of security before riders on trips. So that helps eliminate a lot of the risk. You just mentioned, also the feedback system now, yes, you can do all the things you want to do and provide all the security and do all the trainings for who we call heroes on our platform during the drivers. But things may still go wrong. And so our feedback system allows our riders to read the experience riding with the hero, it allows riders to also read the experience riding in the vein. And so when we get this feedback, because all the vehicles are tracked, and all the vehicles have numbers on them, we're able to deal with the scenario immediately. And for instances where the driver or the hero has gone wrong, if we're able to investigate properly, and find that it's something that requires some immediate action. If the hero has to be taken off the system, then that will be the case. Also, we've had instances where riders have been unruly in instances where they get very unruly, we found ways to deal with this either managing the situation by engaging with the rider or just simply saving other riders and our heroes from experiences and research writers were able to manage this. And that's where technology comes in, you can manage this very easily with technology, or you ask for what's been the worst case scenario we've had. I mean, it was an instance where a one of our heroes was accused that it collided with another drive on the road. And she came out and she accused him that he was one driving rough. And then she started getting off physical with him and say, we did not he just stayed on in this position. And the other riders were able to capture the moment. So when they think got to the security personnel, and she said her own part of the story. By the time the rider said their part, they had clips of it on their phones, it was able to just justify that she was actually at fault. And he was able to get off the hook because it was a really serious scenario that the but we're able to deal with this from feedback from our riders. And people around are able to get feedback. So we train our riders and our heroes to capture these things, whether it's using their phones, or using just having evidence to defend themselves. So that has been maybe one of the worst times we've had dealing with moving people with trips.

Part Two

Only when they get on your vehicles.

Okay, so yes, this challenge is presenting themselves consistently on a day to day basis. They're dealing with people, real people, and everyone is influenced by their environment by what they are dealing with on a day to day basis. And they can take that on anyone on the road. I mean, you've seen rotary in Lagos city like this everyday. But for us in trips, I think we've been able to kind of hedge against some of the risks coming from this angle you've just pointed one is, we don't do cash payments. So if you're taking a trip with trips, you will be paying through your mobile wallet, you'll be paying through the app. So there's no cash payment, so that space for fraud or fraudulent activities happening, when it comes to cash, it's eliminated. The second thing is that when you order for boss on trips, your seat is kept for you until you make the trip. But if you don't make the trip, there's a no show fee. So everyone that makes an order on the trips, I've noticed that they will have their seats kept for them, they see the kind of vehicle that they've ordered for they see the name of the driver, they have contact details of who is going to be I mean, something where we may be adding also is how they were able to have an idea of who is on the bus before they get on the bus. So that provides just predictability buffers, some form of security for riders on trips. So that helps eliminate a lot of the risk. You just mentioned, also the feedback system now, yes, you can do all the things you want to do and provide all the security and do all the trainings for who we call heroes on our platform being the drivers, but things may still go wrong. So our feedback system allows our riders to rate their experience riding with the hero, it allows riders to also read the experience riding in the vein. And so when we get this feedback, because all the vehicles are tracked, and all the vehicles have numbers on them, and we're able to deal with the scenario immediately. And for instances where the driver or the hero has gone wrong, if we're able to investigate properly, and find that it's something that requires some immediate action if the hero has to be taken off the system, that will be the case. Also, we've had instances where riders have been on ruling in instances where they get very unruly, we found ways to deal with this either managing the situation by engaging with the rider or just simply saving other riders and our heroes from experiences and research riders were able to manage this. And that's where technology comes in, you can manage this very easily with technology, or you ask for what's been the worst case scenario we've had. I mean, it was an instance where a one of our heroes was accused that it collided with another drive on the road. And she came out and she accused him that he was one driving rough. And then she started getting off physical with him and say, we did not he just stayed on in his position. And the other riders were able to capture the moment. So when it's in God's to the security personnel, and she said our own part of the story, by the time the writer said their part, they had clips of it on their phones, it was able to just justify that she was actually at fault. And he was able to get off the hook because it was a really serious scenario that the but we're able to deal with this from feedback from our writers and people around, we're able to get feedback. So we trained our writers and our heroes to capture these things, whether it's using their phones, or using just having evidence to defend themselves. So that has been maybe one of the worst times we've had dealing with moving people with trips.

Interesting. I mean, you've said some very interesting things here, what I've picked out is I like the fact that you call your drivers hero, it's very empowering, I really want to be with the heroes. So I think that's very, it's nice that you've done that, I think, the way you sit around being able to tell who is on the same bus with you, I think there's a lot of potential for that, especially from a tourism perspective, we would just be so cool. I mean, and it even aligns nicely with your names, you know, let's pop our trips when I'm sort of I get a view of who I'm going to be going to a certain place with. And we can even start building relationships before then. And when we get on the bus, it's a more enjoyable ride. And I totally buy it. And I totally like what you're doing. So you guys keep up the great work. But I wanted to ask diversification now. So do you see yourself? I mean, you've talked about mobility and right now we're dealing with just road transportation alone now for this yourself moving into something else, maybe what or I don't know, we have this helicopter hailing apps nowadays. I don't know what does the future look like for trip with regards to diversification? Are you guys staying on land road transport? So what do you have planned?

For now trips for us is focused on bosses and we want to stay focused on bosses for a very long time. I mean, it doesn't stop us in the future from considering other options but right now it's just about bosses and getting people are not just boss is just Vegas to get people from bus stop to bus stop or get people from one city to the other city. So and these vehicles will be four wheeled vehicles for now, if we will consider a two wheel versus a three wheeled vehicles, or speedboats, and all going by air in the future, I think that will be a long shot right now for us, we want to focus on the ones we want to focus on and just become a major player in this space with the kind of vehicles we're focused and so but it's exciting to see all the different order forms of writing that is coming up. And maybe in the future, yes, but right now, our focus is just on four wheel vehicles.

I like that very, very focused and getting right there, maximize that level before you then sort of move on to their areas. Very good. So let's start talking about affordability. So studies have shown that 40% of Nigerians, I know that you're a Pan African country, but obviously you started from here. So let's permit me to use Nigeria as a base case. So studies show that 40% of Nigerians live below the poverty line. So affordability is a challenge, right. And again, in some cases, you know, a lot of the traditional down for buses, you know, 100 bucks, 50 Naira, you know, maybe not 100, or 200, or 500, you can get to certain places, how is trip sort of competing with those local players? Because you know, a lot of people in Nigeria, yes, quality is nice, but we're really driven by price, how do you make sure that your prices are stay competitive.

So for us, we've seen it, I mean, you're spot on affordability being a key factor for customers making decisions about what service they will use. But what we've done is when we started out in trips, we were in between what you pay for with Uber, and what you pay for with the regular public buses that are out there. And so we had that middle class people or working class individuals that found in trips the comfort and luxury that they could afford, without necessarily being in one vehicle, and then one driver taking all over, they could afford a very decent vehicle that will take you from one post up to the order. And you can bring out your laptop to walk with it without being scared of somebody stealing it from you. You can sleep in the boss, or you can sleep in the vehicle. And then at your bus stop, you know that you're going to come off the bus with everything intact. And you would like mines, I mean, so that was where we started from. But what we also seen is the opportunity to take our technology to provide better ways of all the other operators in the space to find the advantage of technology in dealing with predictability and dealing with managing the revenues properly. So we technology, these guys now can receive payments better, the fraudulent activities that happened with cash payments, are gradually being eliminated for them, which ability on the timing for when POS will arrive or when it's taking off, or even allowing the customer decide on the seat they want to have on the boss. These are things that are coming up as options for customers now with this order operator. So to them, we find ourselves as collaborators, we find ourselves as enablers as against being competitors to this boss operators with the involvement of our technology in the mix. So I think that's how we've kind of positioned ourselves. And then looking at that pricing mix. I think that's where we find ourselves right now with with our customers.

Okay, nicely, nicely done and nicely said, and you sort of transition those nice to the final section of this interview where we'll be asking around emergent technology. So like you rightly said, you know, you're sort of services driven or rides on a lot of tech. So whether it's payment, whether it's using the app to, you know, for a seamless experience to book your ride and things like that. Now, we know that nowadays people are getting very impatient terms of especially digital natives and people who are sort of familiar with the level of service studies, I've even shown that 42% of users today will stop using the brand, if they've had two bad experiences with them. So how do you I mean, how do you guys innovate from a product perspective? I mean, obviously, considering your product is actually getting people from point A to point B, right? But then you still have to layer on that. So that there's some technology elements that the user interfaces with before they can actually sort of consume your product, your product or your service. How do you sort of make sure that your time user experience from as early on as even maybe even booking it on the platform to be in on the right to post? Right? How do you sort of bring all of that in from a user experience? Perspective? That's one and then the next question is, what sort of technologies do you guys use to sort of drive your business? Whether it's from a user perspective, whether it's from a your driver security, vehicle security, are you guys making use of any emerging tech maybe AI or IoT devices or anything like that? What are you guys using emerging technologies for trips?

Okay, so the first question, we have a product development team, and in fact, one of my co founders leads the product development team in trips to show you how important that team is. A product development team works side by side with the technology team works side by side with the marketing team because all Technology is built in house. Now with the product development team, they're able to take customer feedback from the customer service team find new ways of improving the customer journey find new ways of improving the customer experience, while using trips, and are constantly keeping their ears to the ground for new technologies to deploy, to continue to improve the service. Now, we were still far from being perfect, but we are way, way, way more advanced than we were when we started in September 2019. And constantly, the team is always looking for new ways to improve the service for customers based on feedback based on what we hear. Now when it comes to customers giving feedback and then after two experiences they want to leave. I mean, earlier on the question would have been where would they leave to the vortex came up, there was literally no other platform doing something similar. Now maybe there are maybe one or two options, I don't know, what they've experienced, I've always consistently gotten from them is when they give us this feedback, we improve the service minute by the next update of the app. Most of our customers, they see their feedback been taken into consideration, I think the only thing that we've not successfully done for our customers is increasing the fleet size for daily trips to the level where we accommodate every customer that has come to trips in the past. So in every one customer we move, we have nine other people that we're not able to meet the demand for and that's because this is a defined waste of increasing frequency because they find ways of getting more vehicles on the road moving people. So I think that's the only thing that affects what wait time, that affects being able to get on the on the vehicle within a shorter period. So I think that's the major one on a daily basis. That's what keeps me awake at night to find ways of solving coming into the second question around technologies we use. I mean, it's like your typical ride hailing platform. So you have lots of Google technologies we're using for mapping solutions, we have a lot of tracking services were using to know where our Vegas are protected. From a security perspective, to an operational perspective, we have a lot of technologies, we've had to build ourselves to do geo tagging, to do geo mapping, we understand the power of AI, and the power of Internet of Things. But I understand the power only as much as I am able to use it for my technology today. And that is what we use for our technology today. And the rest of you that we can't, we don't from a payment side, we've partnered with several payment gateways to provide technologies for our customers to be able to easily credit their wallet in order to take the trips on our platform. So to this end, I mean, those are technologies we currently use in everything is handled by the team in house. And yeah, we cannot find new ways of using the new ones that come up to improve the system and improve the service while improving on also what we already have at the moment.

Wow, I what I picked up from what you said is that for every one person, you guys pick up their nine people who are still left. Wow. So that just goes to show that there's a lot of potential for trips. Really,

if you look at it, see we've in two years, we've moved half a million people on a daily basis that 9 million people move in and Davis, but with buses. So we've not even scratched the surface. And if you take all our numbers in last two years, that is still still less than 10% that move on a daily basis in city like Lagos, you're not talking about even the entire country. So I think there's just massive opportunity. But it's a very difficult sector, I will tell you for free. I mean, I've seen many players that looked at trips. In the early days, I felt like hey, I can do this myself. They start out within one month, they're off. Within two months, they're off. It's a very difficult segment to focus on. But once you're able to toughen up, we was able to get the right people on the team, the right people, the team is a major factor. Are you able to get that in place, gradually take one challenge each day and deal with it and move to the next.

Okay, I was actually going to ask just to build on what you've said, I'll ask what's. So it's a tough market. But what gives you that edge to be able to succeed, but I hear you what you're saying now is just having the right people, I guess that's very important in this type of market. You don't have all the budget, but if you don't have the team, then you know there's going to be challenges basically,

with team. It requires a lot of funding the team and a lot of law, you need God to just make sure that you're doing this at the right time. Because there are people that may have had this idea many years ago, if they had tried it, they would have been paying dearly with so many other issues that had to face so I think there's that luck factor is a good factor. There's the team and there's it needs a lot of money to be invested in just getting it we're just looking at mapping out and using the technologies we need to use on a day to day basis. The reason why writing in platform breeds a lot of money is because of how much you have to deploy on technology.

Thanks for that. Okay, so just some closing of questions. Now what Do you think is missing in the ride hailing space? So what's missing? That's preventing troops from achieving that perfect utopia. Okay, I guess you kind of hinted towards it around maybe more vehicles and more funding. But apart from that, you know, looking specifically at Nigeria, and challenges that are sort of unique to us, what do you think is missing in this space that will help you sort of take your business from where it is now, you know, to where it can be in the future.

So I think the first two you mentioned are things that will constantly make any business successful, if you're able to tidy up your operational heartbeat, and you have huge supply. So if our supply meets demand, then that's perfect. And then you have funding in place to do things you need to do it. And that's great. With these two things, you'll be able to get the right people on the team, you can afford to bring people in to do their own magic, you're able to build the right kind of culture, as much as you want to dream about, you're able to explore new markets, able to try new things, you able to break things, and the company doesn't go down experiment. So those first two things become those things that makes or breaks a business at the end of the year. So I think it's the same for us. And just getting I think the last thing I'll add to it is getting the right people on the team.

Very important. Okay, so transport, trade and commerce tend to grow economies, right. And obviously, so a lot of it is a lot of trade is driven by movement, whether we, you know, without on land on waters. Do you think there's a role for trips to play with regards to help in I don't know, from an economic perspective, do you think how do you think ride hailing or, you know, mass, as hailing business players, like yourself come, you know, can contribute to this segment to our economy really. So to develop?

It's all about logistics, you're moving things, you know, moving people, you're moving goods, and services. So I think for us in trips, we focused on moving people from place to place and how we go about that. And how we explore that, in different markets, is what excites us on a daily basis about creating solutions for people. And so we will focus on our own beats. I'm excited about the commerce space. Generally, I would expect excited about what the GCS can do with with the transfer of goods and services. But I want to focus on how people move, I'm more excited about learning from ORA players about how to successfully move people within cities and across cities, within countries and across countries. That is where I'm very excited about. Keep our minds on.

Very good. Very good. So what does what does that? What does it mean? What does the future look like is in the trips? As a case study? What does the future of transport look like? Now? What would you like it to look like? I guess that's what I'm asking. And maybe let's speak specifically around Nigeria, you said you've had conversations with I guess some people at the regulatory level, some people, you know, even within the government framework, are there any sort of interesting plans that will sort of help businesses like yourself to be a bit more like, well, I say to just function more efficiently, because right now things like security presents a challenge, amongst other things, road networks and things like that. So what is that desired future states for the Nigerian transport industry that you think would elevate or would take you guys to the next next level?

So I think what will excite us about the future of trips is where we see technology powering transportation of people, across cities and within cities for us. In Nigeria, we've not seen so much around technology, we don't even know how many people are moving from one city to the other on a daily basis with the different parts of burritos we don't know how many people are using post ops, I mean, we can have come up with estimates based on how many seats were filled and how many trips the vehicle made per day. But where technology comes into play with that where internet of things where artificial intelligence is able to give us data and we're able to use the data to make better informed decisions around transportation generally that is what will excite us that is what will become a huge successful trips and then a future where trips is understood across different markets and is used across different markets where millions and millions of people find comfort in transportation through trips that is what will excite us in the coming years.

Fantastic. So what's one prediction you got wrong? It could be anything what's one view you find that people don't normally agree with you on? You know, is it that can I tell if it's better than Nigeria Angela? Well, I mean what's what prediction Have you got wrong and what's wrong with you that you find people often disagree with you a lot on

Okay, so prediction have gotten wrong.

Anything it could be doesn't have to be business. It could be anything.

Want about Ghanaian judo for Nigeria? You have I've had boots now and I didn't even know the difference on ISIS. Okay, well, I didn't know the difference. Have, I was asking them consistently if I tried it three times. And I kept on asking them, like, what's the difference was not in the why is the hope if we're all the same, we are the same models that taught us how to cook each other off. So I think people should keep that somewhere. But my predictions, yeah, I thought that would be at a stage where the VC world in Nigeria or in Africa will be a lot more advanced than this now. So I was predicting in 2014 2015, that the next five years will be at a stage where you would have VCs, you have 10s and 10s of VCs that had over $100 million in their fund to do deals locally in Nigeria. So I've seen that then because I was looking at what was happening with Jumia and Konga. At that time, I was at spacing to happen. So I got that wrong, because we're not yet there. We're getting but maybe in the next five years again, so what has happened to the likes of flutterwave and paystack. And what has happened to the likes of Jumia. I think it continues to make the space a lot more attractive, what has happened to several other startups in this way. I think it's making it more attractive, but we're still not there where you have including trips, Treepz, or trips to actually benefit from all of these eventually, I was predicting to happen fast as our trips were already stopped benefiting. So but I mean, I look forward to that happening. And then to the next question, you said you had a second question, which is around.

So that was a prediction you got wrong with you said that? What's one view you find that a lot of people don't agree with you on view? People don't agree with me? Or what do you I mean, it could be amongst your co founders, or anybody, like, what's that thing that like, you know, is your own, this one knows nobody's buying this.

So I think a view that people don't? Well, it's eventually I make people agree on my views, but one of it is that we're all products of, well, products of what we've seen in the past, I tell people that everything everyone is doing today is as a result of what the client said yesterday. And every experience of persons get into this as a result of what they had sown in the past. And I always believe that I am also a product of that. So not everyone agrees with that people feel like things can change. I feel like man, at the end of the day, I'm doing my bit today sowing seeds for what I will reap tomorrow. And that's how I see life generally. And I think one last thing I'll say is the god factor. So if not everyone feels like, there's always they feel like hard work. I feel like man, you can be as hard working as you can be if there's no God factor to read, where you find favor you you struggle. So I always believe that. And maybe not everyone will agree to me on that. But I mean, it's we're

at a very refreshing perspective. Thank you for that. Okay, so this is a last question. Now. We said disruption is interrelated. And in that respect. So the previous guest has asked you a question, but we want you to also ask a question to the next guest that's coming. So I'll take the previous guests the question he asks, and he says, What impact do you think cryptocurrency will have on your business? But now considering obviously, you know, the CBS position on crypto, we know that they're moving towards an era. So maybe we can tweak that question to say, what impact do you think you know, each one will have on your business?

I think digital currency and just cashless payments is the future, you would have more businesses embrace that. We're already trying to position ourselves in trips on how we make sure that when people are using IE Naira to pay, they can do that easily on trips today on trips of ready, you can pay with cash, you can you can only pay with credits in your wallets, and paying for our service. So we already deal with them we already deal with when it comes to digital currencies. I think the crypto for me, it was only a matter of time to get to a place where it's properly regulated. But it's one way I think people will start transacting with cryptocurrencies, eventually people are opportunities right now taking advantage of the irregularities in the system, but eventually it will become a mode of making payments in the future and I think is just going to be one of them. So yeah, to answer that question, I think it's the future is one way embracing not the crypto side, but when the digital currency or E Naira e payments, I think it's something we embrace, we're ready to eat that.

Okay. What would you like to ask the next guest? We don't know who that guest is. So anything. What would you like to get from the next question coming under foot?

I think it would be if this person had the opportunity to go back 10 years, what would they change about themselves? If there's anything they will change about themselves? My own answer to that question is not well, we it's been interesting to hear what other people think that's interesting. Absolutely nothing. So even if I gave you if I told you I'll give you 100 million if you were back will only teach my you only change my pots, but I think everything I have Only my past led me to where I am today. And that's why we're on this call. If something else had changed my past, it won't. So when I hear people when people are asked that question, and I hear their answers, usually I expect to hear not. But when I hear all the answers they give them like, really? I want to hear more people's answers. And I'll be listening to the next speaker to see what he says, I hope you're with me first, before you know that I'll show you I'll show you I'll give you a very interesting answer whoever that person is. Okay, thank you so much for your time when you can we really appreciate your time. We really appreciate your insights. And it's been a pleasure talking to you. I mean, you know, being an ex conga, and Ex Machina myself, it's always great to see somebody who has sort of been in the same part as I have, as I have been doing big things and, you know, keep up the good work and I'm just scratching the surface of a huge amount.