Today we feature e-hailing startup company, ORI rides which launched last year in February and has managed to achieve greatness with the awesome products it offers. With a variety of unique services like Boda boda rides, taxi/cab rides, the option of choosing rides with female drivers, ambulances, airport pick up and drop, mover trucks and so much more, it is surely dominating the transport sector. It has a great edge over other ride-hailing services with its safety option for female customers who can choose female drivers.
Also read: Tubayo travel is truly the captivating force in Uganda’s tourism industry.
Check out our insightful interview with ORI rides.
Tell us a little about your company.
ORI Rides is a next-generation ride-hailing service built for the East African market. We offer a comprehensive range of transport services and are working to adapt the global concept to meet our customer’s specific needs with benefits and features that make sense for our market. This currently includes making improvements to traditional ride-hailing services and will soon include facilitating commercial and social services such as ambulance call-out, movers, and rental vehicles.
How did you get the concept to start the company?
Over the years, we watched this space and industry, within Uganda and globally, and noticed some key gaps that could be filled to better meet the needs of drivers and riders. We needed a localized solution for the average African city, which have unique problems: intense traffic jams, high cost of fuel usage, fluctuating ride-sharing prices and severe, unpredictable road conditions and road work. ORI rides was borne with the intention to fill these voids and reflect realistic conditions on the ground, while making it easier for customers. That is also why we wanted a range of services being available through one app. We know customers shop around, using different apps for their transportation needs. We wanted to try to mitigate this from happening, make it more efficient for them and allowing us to be more competitive market.
How did you finance the start up?
Being such a big project financing definitely does not come easy. We however managed to raise capital from director savings, Funding from friends and family and a few loans here and there. Partnering with the right stakeholders has also been of great value to us. We are keeping an eye out for potential investments.
Why should anyone use your services and application?
We are measurably improving the lives of our driving partners, with better compensation, as already mentioned and we have a three-pronged approach to our service delivery: driver-centric, customer-centric and community-centric. We strive to better lives through our services, giving otherwise hard-to-access services.
Share some of your achievements
Despite launching during the Covid19 pandemic, we have been able to carry on have 5000 downloads of the customer app and 2,000+ taxi drivers signed up.
We have also been able to improve our application through constant feedback from both our partner drivers and the customers.
If you had sufficient funding, what plans would you have for the company. What are the future plans and aspirations?
With funding, we will be able to train boda riders and drivers on customer care, safety, traffic guidelines, Subsidize some of the work tools like smartphones and helmets to make them much more affordable and Launch more of our service products like the ambulance and delivery options.
What challenges have you faced?
As every startup knows, challenges are our daily fare. Whether it’s team building, a lack of market data, or Covid-related disruptions, building our company from the ground up has required us to learn how to quickly adapt to our circumstances.
Some of the biggest challenges we are facing as we work to scale our business include competing against well-funded, global brands such as Uber, in-housing our app development resources, and expanding into the new urban markets that are part of our growth strategy.
What are your thoughts on Uganda’s e-hailing sector?
There is a lot of government support needed for the sector. It is an industry that is growing and could greatly boost economic growth.
What has been the best method of advertising and why?
The best method for advertising so far has been social media and person to person referrals from the experiences that they’ve actually got from using the application. From these two I would say that the referrals worked best because the drivers were able to in a way market to the customers (passengers) and vice versa. We got a lot of traction in this way.
Describe your breakthrough moment
When you are in the tech industry any slight innovation is a breakthrough. As ORI rides, we’ve had many of those moments. The best of all was passing the testing stage of our application and fine-tuning the payments system.
Download the ORI rides app via these links. Google Play Store | App Store