Revolutionary Concept of "Ride Sharing" as an Alternative for Transportation Services

Concept ride sharing often equated with service ride hailing. Despite having the same goal, these two concepts actually have significant differences. ride hailing oriented to the demand of passengers who need a vehicle; temporary ride sharing more focus on vehicle owners who have empty slots to share the ride.

One of the startups that focuses on working on the segment ride sharing is Tebegan. Tebengan Co-Founder & CEO Will Widjaja was first exposed to this concept when he attended a conference in Aarhus, Denmark in 2014. Having met some local people, when he was about to return to Copenhagen by train, they offered to use an app. ride sharing which turned out to be common there.

"At that time I thought, with a cheaper price, a more comfortable place, and there are friends Chat, why not just try to develop it. This is what inspired me to make Tebengan in Indonesia," added Will.

Business focus

On its way, startup ride sharing which will be entering its 4th year in March 2021, has also experienced a changing business model phase. To achieve product market fit the company starts from the driver iteration to create routine routes, then provides the system offer so that they can also offer services to passengers.

Will also revealed, "Our biggest challenge is how to coordinate 2 users who have different addresses, different destinations and different hours to coordinate with each other, what kind of features should we present to facilitate that."

In addition, the patience of vehicle owners and passengers is also a reason for the occurrence of complaints in the application, which has been downloaded by more than 10 thousand users. Trust is also one of the essential factors for business continuity. Several features such as SIM verification, ID cards, as well as a community for discussion forums were also developed to build trust between vehicle owners and passengers.

About potential ride sharing in Indonesia, this concept itself has actually become a culture in Indonesia. In this segment, there are several players who also offer similar services such as Noompang and Nebengers.

When asked about differentiation, Will said, "Value proposition What we want to bring here is a comfortable and enjoyable driving experience. Our hope is that the simplicity offered through this tebengan application can make it easier user to find new friends or relationships with appropriate objectives."

In the midst of the pandemic, the service also emphasized that the ecosystem in Tebengan is always recommended to comply with the applicable protocols, both on the number of passengers in the vehicle as well as other health protocols regulated by the government.

In terms of price, this platform is not tasked with setting numbers, but providing appropriate recommendations. However, it all comes back to the vehicle owner's decision. Currently tebengan is still focused on serving users in the Greater Jakarta area and has begun to develop coverage between cities/provinces.

"Our focus is still on Jabodetabek, now we are building a community system where we can create discussion groups between passengers and vehicle owners. Currently, we want to focus on areas that lack public transportation by opening new routes that are not available on public transportation," explained Will.

For information, Tebengan is one of the participants in the accelerator program DSLaunchpad held by DailySocial in collaboration with Amazon Web Services.

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