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

Protest Network

[UpdateD: FEB 2013]

I recently remember this post. I want to complain about Avianca, the Colombian Airline, so much lately. Imagine that Avianca has prohibited the use of mobile devices in its flights even when the smartphone is on airplane mode. I understand this prohibition when you are taking off or landing but when you are cruising, it is illogical. I am sure Avianca´s business travelers are pretty upset about this rule (if they are actually following the rule). What seems illogical for me is how can Avianca survive with this rule if most airlines survive because of their business travelers. I am guessing that having a quasi-monopoly in the country helps somehow.

[ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: Nov 2011]

Need:

I feel that there is a need for a platform where you can collect complains about anything. I know there are bulletin boards and FB pages, but can we make something better. Something focus on just that (like Quora that launched last year)

Description:

Something that has been design so people can find different type of complains by theme, author, geography, company, etc. Probably it has to start by focusing on something so i will suggest starting with business complaints. Right now the way these type of complaints are communicated are through social media in a very disorganized way or in random discussion boards. I feel that there is a market for this platform after looking at several FB pages that are created just to complain or protest about something. Of course this platform will have a f-connect or other links to successful social networks to make it relevant.

Potential:

I feel that it can have the same potential that trip advisor but for other type of businesses. The business model would probably be a subscription fee charged to businesses to monitor the complaints in the website and create some type of dashboard for them. In terms of business model I am guessing some type of freemium model. Probably starting the paid subscription for large business at $2000 a year. I am thinking that each sales rep can manage 100 accounts so charging $2k will give us a margin of 50% after expenses. I may be off given that I truly door understand the willingness to pay of large businesses for this type of services but I feel that this amount may be reasonable if we offer true value.