Final Friday, HerRyde, a woman-only ride-hailing firm, launched in Abuja. In keeping with the corporate’s co-founders (CEO Monsurah Oluwafuyi, COO Muhammad Muazu, and Chief Product Officer Kamaldeen Ibrahim), the corporate is offering a safer possibility for feminine drivers and riders whereas creating work alternatives for extra ladies.
In an unique assertion made to TechCabal, they stated, “HerRyde is dedicated to ladies’s security and inclusion within the ride-hailing/mobility house. We intention to offer ladies with safer taxi experiences whereas driving inclusion by offering a secure house for girls to work and earn as mobility entrepreneurs.”
When requested in regards to the purpose behind beginning an organization that may solely serve ladies, they stated the corporate’s thought got here from their collective want to vary the fact that too many ladies get harassed and abused on ride-hailing journeys. For instance, Muzau’s aunt had an encounter with a driver who instructed her: “If you happen to had been my spouse, I’d have overwhelmed you for retaining me ready.” Social media platforms are sometimes rife with tales of physical assault, sexual assault, and robbery suffered by ladies whereas on rides.
TechCabal additionally requested Abuja ladies how they felt about lastly having a women-only cab-hailing service. One in every of them, Boluwatito Sanusi, a publishing assistant primarily based in Abuja, defined that she usually feels unsafe in cabs. Each time she’s on a visit, she makes positive to sit down behind the motive force and to share her location with another person. A women-only platform like HerRyde feels like a good suggestion to her.
HerRyde’s Chief Product Officer, Kamaldeen Ibrahim, instructed TechCabal on a name that the corporate selected to launch in Abuja due to Abuja’s decrease barrier to entry in comparison with Lagos, which calls for quite a few licences from drivers and ride-hailing apps.
Ibrahim’s expertise constructing the ORide product as a former product supervisor at Opay was invaluable within the improvement of HerRyde. Joined with this experience is Oluwafuyi’s background in advertising, administration consulting, and HR and Muazu’s background in danger, compliance, and information science.
In a 2019 study on women-only ride-hailing platforms, researchers from the UCLA Anderson Faculty of Administration and Hong Kong Polytechnic found that as a result of there’s a smaller pool of drivers out there, these providers are usually dearer and of decrease high quality.
In response to those potential challenges of value and high quality, the three co-founders stated that the corporate will decide fares the identical approach Uber and Bolt do, primarily based on time and distance, as an alternative of utilizing InDriver’s strategy, a ride-hailing platform that permits customers to barter their last fare.
Whereas testing out their product on Tuesday and evaluating it to Uber, TechCabal discovered {that a} trip from Asokoro Common Hospital to Gwagalada Central Mosque was estimated at N5,028 in comparison with Uber’s N6,050.
*Editor’s observe: We put out a model of this text yesterday, however there have been errors which have now been corrected.