"Beba" A mobile Application for public transport management

Beba app is a mobile platform that will monetize idle time arising from unstructured public transport system and offer drivers extra revenue while providing discounted travel fares to Kenyan passengers.

In Kenya and by extension East Africa, public transport is very unstructured and therefore disorganized due to the manual nature it is run and managed. The sector though slowly embracing digitization, faces great resistance from shadowy cartels who prefer the status quo that promotes confusion to continue because it gives them an opportunity to thrive. On daily basis, the Kenyan public transportation system moves over 1.85 million passengers and in the process generating revenue in excess of Ksh.1.5 billion (US$100.2 million), with a potential loss in revenue on daily basis of over Kshs.250 million. (UD$20.2 million)The public transport economy bleeds from the cartels that include traffic police, unscrapulous Sacco officials, greedy touts among others. The problem in this sector is deeply rooted and cross cuts government departments, transport operating SACCO's and companies, proxy's among others and it is almost impossible for governmet to bring order in the sector due to competing interest. Besides the loss of revenue, there is also lack of travel scheduling systems that would enable travel pre-booking by passengers under a time bound booking system, there is therefore a lot of time wastage in the vehicle queuing process that leads to idling of transportation resources. 

Our solution to the above stated problem is the development of a mobile based application  that connects passengers with idle long distance public service passenger vehicles through their drivers.This platform will enable the driver to post their availability at scheduled time-frames, and the passengers will show interest in the driver's travel plan by booking seats on the vehicle in advance and paying for through mobile money to avoid time wastage. The interesting thing is that the platform offers the drivers a chance to carry passengers when they are idle but at discounted fares which is below the usual market rates and which they are willing to take because it's an opportunity to make extra revenue instead of remaining idle as they queue waiting for their turn to carry passengers on their normal route plans as established by their individual passenger pick-up stage managers. The mobile platform also has a component that enables car pooling whereby a private passenger vehicle driver can request for accompanying passengers who are heading towards his/ her destination, and who are willing to fall into the driver's travel plan.

We target long distance public transport service providers on one hand and long distance passengers on the other hand. The aforementioned service providers regularly experience idleness once they terminate their travel destinations as they have to queue waiting for their turn to carry passengers. Our solution will help these service providers to monetize their idle time to earn an extra income while they wait for their turn to carry passengers from their officially designated passenger pick-up points. On the other hand, the passengers traveling long distance are usually rural to urban travellers who are essentially persons of low economic means who desire to travel most affordably, which beba application seeks to offer to them through discounted fares offer.

As the Innovator behind this idea, I am currently a high school student and I have started coding as my passion. My partner who is my elder sister is currently enrolled for a comprehensive software development program at the world renowned AkiraChix's Code Hive. My father who also doubles as our mentor is a seasoned accountant and a financial management expert. The team is also composed of 2 other persons who are very good in product marketing.

Immediately after I bumped into the idea leading to the innovation, I took some time to research on the problem by asking the passengers whether they enjoyed the current manual system where they are forced to travel to public service vehicle pick up stations to board their vehicles for travel. I recorded their responses. I then analyzed their suggestions on how they feel the solution should be presented to solve the situation. This enabled me to refine the solution and develop the innovation concept further, while taking into consideration their individual recommendation and suggestions as regards their expectations in the new innovation.I as well have spoken to several public service long distance drivers about the solution that we would like to offer to them that will help them to utilize their idle time to make more money instead of just idling around during their idle time while queueing for their turn to ferry passengers. The feedback I have obtained from them has enabled me to validate the efficacy of our solution  in meeting these potential user's needs in the market. The drivers are ready to support the innovation by signing up once the platform goes live in a few months time from now.

Beba app is a solution which eventually seeks to disrupt long distance public transportation. The solution will first seek to eliminate inefficiencies in the long distance public transportation value chain by helping to monetize idle time for the service providers as we build capacity for our envisaged complete disruption processed, which will see us acquiring and branding our own fleet that will essentially operate strictly within our business model. 

Beba app is a disruptive innovation that will seek to eliminate inefficiencies in the long distance public transport value chain. We target to launch our complete public transport disruption mechanism in 15 months time, that promises to completely revolutionize the public transport space in Kenya and eventually East Africa. The first process in this journey is to allow the targeted public transport operators to embrace our model  and with time, capture them in the disruptive system that will wean them from the cartel controlled unstructured and very disorganized manual system. By adopting our model, they will begin earning more revenue and by extension profits, while at the same provide very competitive travel fares. The disruption will also finally help government to bring order to the sector that will eventually eliminate cartels. This by extension will  with time help government to penetrate public transport industry for targeted funding and taxation using  an efficient online platform that would allow tracking revenue flows for the various participating public transport service operators.

Beba is a mobile based application that will operate both on Android operating system as well as the iPhone operating system (iOS).

Long distance public transportation is quite a huge industry in Kenya with over 100000 vehicles plying Kenyan routes. For the first year of our operations, we target to serve 1% of these vehicles on our platform which will be about 1000 vehicles on a daily basis. This will in turn impact over 20000 passengers with discounted fares and in the process earning us an estimated commission amounting to Kshs.1 million (about US$ 15000) on daily basis.

The main challenges that may limit our impact next year is lack of adequate technology to launch a versatile platform as well as funding that will help us scale our operations through superior quality services. The current industry is also infiltrated by powerful cartels that are attracted by the huge amounts of money exchanging hands on daily basis.

I have started working with Eldohub (www.eldohub.co.ke) which is a Digital Innovation Hub (DIH) based in my hometown of Eldoret in Kenya. The organization is helping me build my software development skills with a view of enabling me to be capable to develop my mobile application. The idea has also been accepted for acceleration by the hub, where the hub would second mobile application experts to us to help develop the idea into a flourishing business in a 3 months tech experts placement programme.

Beba app works to connect passengers to idle long distance public transport service providers. We seek to monetize idle time by creating a value chain through which passengers will access these vehicles and pay discounted fares for their travel via mobile money on one hand, and on other hand the transport operators will earn an extra income on their idle capacity hence providing value to both business parties. By connecting passengers and the service providers, we in the process earn a commission for the use of the platform in transacting.

We envisage to grow our business exponentially within the first 3years of our operations. During this period, we will start by contracting long distance public service vehicles to ferry our passengers acquired through the Beba mobile application platform (these contractors will be known as "Limited Edition Contractors") LECs. We will charge a commission for access to the passengers paying for the service through mobile money links on the platform. We will also aggressively seek investors through investment call rounds as well as apply for grants such as the MIT Solve grants now being sought.