ZipCar Systems to Open Your Home

Need

Ok, if you have not seen my previous post, please check it out before reading this one because this idea is just a "sub-idea" to my previous post: http://www.marceloburbano.com/2013/08/zipcar-system-for-individuals.html

The need is similar to my previous post. I am tired of looking for my keys to open my home. Can we put the opening system in my wallet or anything that I am wearing (e.g. my watch)? Given that I only really know about the ZipCar system to open car doors I am going to follow my instinct that the first global/massive way to open home doors would look like a cardkey.

Description

Bla, bla, bla... you know how it is going to look like if you read my previous post. The only piece that is different is the third party installer. In this case I am thinking of two types: the security companies that install the alarms in every developing country (and some developed countries now that inequality is rising) or the companies that offer security doors (those doors that are not your regular "Joe Door" but made of steal and very very difficult to open if you do not have the key).

Potential

Again... bla, bla, bla... if this worked for cars... hmm let me think, is there more homes that cars?... yeap! ok so you see my point on "potential".

ZipCar System for Individuals

Need

Why do we keep using keys to enter cars? Isn´t there a better way? Wait! How long have ZipCar existed? Why haven´t we adopted ZipCar way of opening cars? Imagine having 2,3,4 cards to open the same car. In a family of 3+ this is a constant battle. In countries that have a lot of traffic and laws to limit the cars on the road (e.g. Mexico, Colombia, Chile, etc.), people have the additional problem that need to switch cars every other day, this is a very tedious task when you only have one key for each car.

Description

Get the ZipCar system of opening car doors. Create an "Initiating Kit" that local repair/garage shop can install pretty easily with some instructions. Probably consider signing up some local repair/garage shop at the beginning to guarantee the quality of the installation. 

Potential

Charge for the "Initiating Kit", for extra cards and configuration. I am thinking we can probably charge US$20 per "Initiating Kit" without the installation and US$5 per new keycard. Only in Bogota, Colombia, we have a million cars on the road. Assuming you can expand to 100 cities like Bogota in the world this is a US$2.5B market. At some point, we can make this system pretty competitive and good so we can sell it to car manufacturers directly.

Coordinate the less sophisticated public transportation

Need

I have recently noticed that there is no app to coordinate the bus system in places like Bogota where the system is NOT all centralized. I have to explain how the system works here in Bogota for everybody to understand. There are two bus systems in Bogota, one that is coordinated by a private-public partnership (TransMilenio) and the other that is a collection of private providers with their own buses (Lets call the second one TransOld for easy understanding). For TransMilenio you have a couple of apps that can tell you about how the system works but nothing that actually tracks where the different buses are. For TransOld is even worst because there each provider has their own way to coordinate the buses. That means that you will find a person hired by the provider every X kilometers controlling how the bus drivers are doing in terms of  time-to-the-next bus. As a user you do not have a clue about when is the next bus going to arrive. Keep in mind that buses from the TransOld system stop wherever they want not at your usual BusStop making the entire process even more desorganized.

Description

The idea is pretty simple. Build an app that can help both private providers of the TransOld system and users of the system. For the providers the app will help them track their own buses and coordinate them via cellphone. For the users the app will show them where the bus is on the map. The app will allow specific searches so you can find out which bus you need to take to go to X location. Then it will tell you where the closest bus is and how much time do you have before it gets there (probably with some connection with Waze for traffic). We can probably do some type of similar app for the Transmilenio, not to help the provider but to help the users in real time. 

Potential

I am actually not sure about the business model here. We can probably charged the provider some amount that can be less than the salary of the people he hires to do the job now. From the users perspective, we can probably charge for the premium app giving them a basic app for free. The business model is limited to the amount of people that have smartphones (I am guessing) and the amount of people that will invest in the premium app. Assuming that the TransOld system transports half of the passenger of the Transmilenio that means 2.5M people in Bogota, the revenue from app sales will be at probably around US$1M. We will probably need to charge US$0.99 every year to give the users the necessary updates. The revenue from the providers is a little bit more difficult to calculate. Assuming (a) that each provider has at least one person controlling the process right now at minimum salary (US$250/month), and (b) that TransOld has at least the same amount of the buses that Transmilenio (~2K), the subscription revenue will be US$6M a year. Now, imagine in how many cities you can introduce this system and multiple our US$7M by that number. It is probably a US$100M business just in Latin America.

Why a ZipCar when you can have a ZipTaxi?

[Update: January 2013]

After the recent announcement of AVIS acquiring ZipCar,  I have to assume that management thought that the best outcome for the company was to sell itself to a bigger company and not to continue to open cities around the world. Why is that?

[Originally Published: July 2012]

Need

Some developing countries are considering implementing the ZipCar model to improve mobility in big cities. I believe that in certain cities like Bogota, implementing a ZipCar model could be too complex and costly for the investor. Nevertheless there is still a need to move around the city for periods of time that can be more than just a ride in a taxi.

Description

What about if we create a subscription model for taxis? Instead of paying for a ride you pay a subscription a months for certain amount of time. There has to be some capabilities that the model needs to provide to be successful in a city like Bogota:

1. Security: the start-up has to provide secure rides for passengers. The model will need a system that provides this features (e.g. like a code or something)

2. Reliability: the start-up needs to make sure that taxis are always available even at peak hours. I believe you can achieve this if the system relies in technology to be more efficient in terms of number of taxis available in a specific zone and trying to match previous historical patterns. I believe that if you take a set of passengers and analyze their taxi usage you are going to find that the majority of their trip were to/from the same locations.

3. Simplicity:  the subscription model has to be pretty simple and you should be able to manage everything from your smartphone. The subscription model will probably have two parts to the equation: One that covers the "taxi base" (i.e. amount of money that you need to pay the taxi driver to have him/her participate in the program and connect to the system) and the other that covers the actual system (i.e. you probably need to develop an app and maintain some type of system or platform, that will cost you money).

Potential:

Let me just calculate the potential only for Bogota (then you can assume that there are X cities like Bogota and just get the overall world number for this idea). In Bogota there are 8M people. Lets assume that the same wealth distribution exist in Bogota than in the country. Following government data 1% of the population in Colombia makes between US$1000 and US$3500 a month. I believe this group will be our core group (plus students) given that they do not have enough money to purchase a second car (to avoid "pico y placa"). That means that there is a potential customer base of 80,000 people.

Lets assume that this people have to taxi every other day (because of the "pico y placa") and that they pay for a round trip. In average cab fares should be around US$5 per trip. That means that this people will spend around US$1,560 a year (52 wks x $30 -assuming that some weeks you have more than 2 days of "pico y placa")

80K x US$1.5K = US$120M a year