Audible for Latin America

NEED
I have been trying to understand why there are not that many audiobooks in Spanish. If you go to www.audible.com you will find very poor collection of Spanish audiobooks. Even most of the bestsellers are not produced in Spanish.

DESCRIPTION
Create an www.audible.com for Latin America (in Spanish and Portuguese). Keep in mind that this probably means having a recording studio to create quality Spanish audiobooks of the bestsellers.

POTENTIAL
"Audiobooks are the fastest growing segment in publishing and everyone within the industry is very bullish about the future of the format.  There are a number of new start-ups that are making waves and retailers are beginning to release that audiobooks are worth investing in. The global audiobook industry is currently evaluated at 2.8 billion dollars and this is primarily due to the sheer amount of new titles that were produced in 2015. 43,000 new audiobooks were released this year, which is a slight increase from the 36,000 that came out in 2014 and a far cry from the 20,000 that were issued in 2013." by Michael Kozlowski

Crowd-Reviews for Services that Need to Be Reviewed Almost Daily

Need

I have been suffering from very poor cellphone service in Colombia. It appears that there is no good cellphone provider in Latin America, all providers are regionals and every provider has some type of problem with its infrastructure. When I am in Bogota it is very common to hear people complaining about their mobile providers but despite complaints there is NO other choice. The biggest problem is that you actually do not know which provider is better. This is a huge problem because you end up choosing a provider because of a specific discount or promotion or even worse because of an anecdote by a friend.

There is a clear need to have a platform that can compile reviews for services that are really hard to measure. This is not about a specific product that reviewers can buy and just comment on it pretty quickly. This is about reviewing services that can change on daily basis. Services that need to be reviewed every day of the year.

Description

Imagine if we could have a platform that can compile review for specific services. These reviews will be generated by the same people that are complaining about the service on a very specific format that has to be reviewed by an internal team from the platform. 

Let me explain it better by using an example. I want to know which cellphone provider is the best in terms of quality of calls, quality of data connection and customer service (just to mention three very relevant topics). The platform will be open to collect reviews under a very specific format. In this case I can see how to be able to upload a review you need to have three other friends with a different cellphone provider. The review will be relatively easy to make. It is a video of the three friends trying to call someone from the same location to test quality of calls. Then a video of those three friends trying to use their data plan (e.g. using skype, or sending a large file on whatsapp, etc.). Then a video of those three friends trying to call customer service to claim the same problem. People can upload just a video per topic, do not need to cover all topics. The idea behind the video and the simultaneous reviews is to guarantee the veracity of all reviews.

Potential

The business model is probably similar to TripAdvisor, using the platform to sell services or charging for advertising. In terms of numbers I do not have a clue but it feels that it can be a big market. 

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

Flash Sales Meet Door-To-Door SalesForce

Need:

In Latin America is very common for someone to travel to the US buy clothes and then sell them back to their friends in their home country. Clothes in the US are cheaper than in Latin America (in general). Sadly if you want to import a bunch of clothes to a Latin American country is not THAT easy. In certain cases there are tariffs but in most cases you find wholesalers that own the right to sell that brand in the country. Because most of this wholesalers sell their brands indirectly to small retailers the markups end up being outrageous compare to the price in the US. Even if the wholesalers have their own retail, those location cost a fortunes to maintain and again the markups needed to make some margin have to be outrageous.

In Latin America, women want to buy clothes that are less expensive from a source that they can trust. That is why they purchase clothes and accessories from their friends that travel to the US and bring stuff back to sell.

Description:

Initially we thought we can just bring a ideeli.com, gilt.com or a ruelala.com to Latin America and that would be enough. Sadly we saw that there were already several players trying to do exactly that in the largest Latin American markets (i.e. Mexico, Brazil and Argentina). Those players (Privalia, BrandsClub, Geelbe) where already fighting for the excess inventory of all the top brands in those countries. As the Groupon-like in this region, they were fighting to death. In this competitive market you want to be different.

Looking at what works in Latin America you cannot avoid looking at the cosmetic industry that has perfected Direct Selling. The Avon, Belcorp, Oriflame, Natura of this world have leveraged our personalities needs and drive to sell their products.

Combining Flash Sale with Direct Selling seems to be a perfect combination for women all over Latin America. Flash Sale provides discounts on top brands and Direct Selling provides trust in the transaction (something that lacks online transaction in Latin America). The idea is simple. Create a platform like ideeli, gilt and ruelala that can be downloaded to a tablet (i.e. offline capabilities). Provide an inexpensive tablet to your direct salesforce. Create a cost structure similar to avon, belcopr, oriflame and natura alikes. Build your company.

Potential:

Difficult to quantify but you can probably make more than Privalia today (EUR$168M).