2019 is set to be a good year in the Kenyan public transport sector. Four companies - Uber, Little, Safiri Express and Egypt-based Swvl - are eyeing the public transport in Kenya with bus sharing apps.
Time to rid the public transport sector of the leeches who thrive in chaos is here. It is time for change; what a time to be alive when the matatu cartels are strangled to slow and painful death.
The government should give support to such initiatives.
The only way to rid this city of chaos is gonna be slow through such initiatives because anything drastic isn’t safe .
Matatu sacco’s will only have themselves to blame. Hii miaka yote, and none has ever thought of automating their services, since independence.
By now, these sacco’s should be owning some passenger light trains and aircraft.
Si hawa matatu crooks watachoma these buses na all the passengers in them… usisahau the matatu sector harbours gangs & crooks… but kesho i’ll try them :rolleyes::rolleyes:
Hata watu wa personal cars, if you can provide a reliable and cost effective service, gari zitakuwa zinaonekana weekend na days were you are required to move alot. But hii ya kwenda ofisini, park gari from 7.30am to 6pm, spend a few hundreds on parking, kila mwezi tatu uko service… tutaisahau
All that paradiso and umoinner have are passengers, who I doubt use those matatus because they love. It’s because they have no other choice. Matatus are like a monopoly.
Competition from the bus sharing service will make their old tactic obsolete. They will be driven out of town.
hii haiwes…Nairobi is a fast moving city. If people could be teleported from town to outskirts then back, they would. Anyway, let’s wait and see…I doubted uber and they prove me wrong so I’ll be open minded.
Lets not forget,Swvl have deep pockets and are looking at the bigger picture(addressable market for the next many years)…they just raised over Ksh 4 billion to expand to Dakar,Manila,Jakarta and Johanesburg…they already doing well in Cairo,Egypt and competing with the likes of Uber Bus and Careem Bus…They launch officially tomorrow and have been conducting trainings all week plus selecting their fleet and funding their entire operation as well as setting up and staffing up their Nairobi office in readiness for the launch.So from this coming week expect a massive ad campaign on all media raising awareness of them,they are offering promo codes that give free rides and their goal for the next few months will be to increase engagement/ridership and improving their customer experience and grow their local rider base…i.e millions of smartphone users in Nairobi.
If Matatu SACCOs do not unite now,clean their mess up and embrace technology and deploy an app,they will suffer the same wrath traditional taxis faced when Uber,Little and Taxify successfully upended their entire business and took their customers three years ago.
:D:D:D:D:D This is true. I know one guy who had a 14 seater that used to ply Nairobi-Kisumu before the age of Saccos. The guys used to bring home only 1400 on a good day. Other times he had to send money to them from his own pocket. He nearly developed blood pressure. After a while, they quite his job and bought their own matatu. Industry naskia ni moto sana
The government has tried to help them organise their shit but each time they resit vehemently. As one has said, technology will struggle them. They may burn a few matatus but they can only go that far.
First they will cry Swvl is a monopoly to the Govt and try to take them to court,But Swvl have deep pockets to hire the best lawyers like Uber,they will say they are not a monopoly and that there are local operators like little shuttle and traditional matatu operators will cry that these new guys will not help the Govt achieve its big 4 agenda(Politics) eti these new players will cause job losses n stuff which will increase crime n all that…Uber bus could use the tactics as Swvl.Then the traditional matatu operators will run to the city county govt and beg for help in terms of tough legislation but already the city county has passed legislation on app based transit services and set the fees and charges they have to pay so then they will become desperate and turn it political,just like the way the kenya taxi association was not united and organized,matatu associations will fight each other and backstab each other…Swvl and the other companies will use this opportunity to encourage existing and new matatu saccos to onboard onto their platforms.Politicians who are clever will form their own SACCOs and onboard their new buses on the platforms and will see the benefits just like they already see on their uber/taxify taxi fleets.Uber,Swvl and Little could hire and maintain a lobby to woo enough politicians in county and national parliament to shoot down any legislation traditional matatu operators petition parliament to do.Matatu SACCOs fearing for the worst will try to get a local technology player(Safaricom Maybe) to partner to build an app that copies these features by this time its too late Uber Bus,Swvl,Taxify and Little as well as any other new clever entrants will be fighting for the remaining marketshare in other towns and cities like mombasa,nakuru,eldoret and kisumu.Traditional matatu operators will cry foul and start using underhand tactics like burning buses,beating swvl drivers which will quickly make traditional operators unpopular e.t.c but the law will not be on their side,police will use this to crack down on them.KRA will ask Swvl and other app based operators to provide them with detailed information on industry revenues so they can now effectively identify fleet operators that make beyond a certain amount of revenue(daily,weekly,monthly,annually) and tax them accordingly.This way Govt can finally increase its tax revenues from an opaque industry it has been unable to do anything about.Govt wont ban or block them coz of lack of political will and the app based services will be quickly popular with consumers/customers/nairobians so any move against them will be seen as anti-progress.Kamagiras and Conductors will soon be laid off by their traditional matatu owners since they have gone broke and their activities taken a toll on their own bread.So in the end,however long this drags out,change is coming to Matatu industry…BRT and other modes of transport will come in and take up almost the same app model as the efficiency and revenue visibility plus existing base will be too tempting to ignore.