Bolt, the Estonian ride-hailing firm, is launching in Gaborone, the capital metropolis of Botswana, and can compete in a market with just one different ride-hailing participant: inDrive. 

Bolt is not going to cost its typical fee from drivers, often between 15% and 20% of the trip charge, for six months as a part of its rollout. The corporate mentioned 100 drivers have been onboarded thus far.

Bolt’s launch in Botswana continues the corporate’s growth in southern Africa. It has launched in Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Namibia within the final six months. Botswana is the 14th African nation that Bolt has launched since first launching in South Africa in 2016.

“We’re thrilled to introduce our companies in Botswana,” mentioned Laurent Koerge, head of growth at Bolt. “Our intention is to extend earnings for our drivers whereas fostering excessive demand via aggressive pricing.”

Bolt enters a Botswana ride-hailing market ripe for development but in addition presents a difficult working surroundings for ride-hailing platforms. inDrive was the primary platform to check out the Botswana market, launching within the nation 5 years in the past. It remained the one platform within the nation till now. 

Though it has blown up in popularity, maybe displaying the quantity of demand for ride-hailing within the nation, inDrive has confronted quite a few challenges, together with allegations of driver misconduct in addition to pushback from public transport operators. 

Bolt has options resembling an SOS button, which permits riders and drivers to contact the police immediately; driver unmatching, which is able to permit a rider or driver by no means to be matched up with each other; and a “share my trip” choice which is able to permit each events to share real-time trip info. The platform may also require drivers to have all of the requisite licenses from native regulators. By means of these options, the corporate shall be hoping to deal with the problems of security and misconduct which have plagued ride-hailing in Botswana.

In early 2023, Bolt introduced its plan to take a position over €500 million within the African market. Certainly one of its initiatives was to supply job alternatives to over 300,000 driver companions. The corporate operates in 45 international locations globally, serving over 150 million prospects and dealing with over 3 million drivers.