New Uber and Bolt rival taking aim at major issue in South Africa

The South African e-hailing platform Twytch plans to compete with international rivals such as Uber and Bolt by addressing one of the industry’s biggest problems – safety.

The new company, which will launch its app in February, recently announced it has a strategy in place to fill a gap in the market for safe transport using innovative methods to verify users on its service.

A big issue in the industry

Safety has been a major concern for both e-hailing drivers and customers in recent years, following a spate of news stories involving kidnappings, assaults, and muggings taking place across various platforms.

Commuters are understandably wary of entering a stranger’s car that could potentially take them somewhere other than their stated destination, but drivers have also been identified as an easy target for hijackers.

These concerns have prompted Bolt and Uber operators in major cities such as Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Durban to go on strike for better working conditions, with better safety protocols being one of the chief demands.

Twytch’s proposed solution to this problem is to employ blockchain technology to verify the credentials of both drivers and passengers using the app.

The company’s founder and CEO, Don Reddy, explained to Lotus FM that each ride would have a verified passenger and a verified driver with their credentials stored cryptographically on a decentralised blockchain, making the data impossible to forge or alter.

The platform hopes to tide over new drivers by promising to treat them more like employees with benefits, rather than independent contractors.

“What we realize in the e-hailing industry is that there are many gaps in the market as there are no driver benefits, such as medical insurance or driver death or disability benefits,” he said.

The company has thus partnered with Momentum and FNB to provide health and financial solutions for its operators.

Twytch does not rely on a commission-based funding model like Bolt or Uber, and drivers are paid on a per-kilometre basis.

In constrast, operators on other apps have complained that up to 40% of their earnings are taken by the company, leaving them with very little at the end of the day since they are responsible for their own fuel and maintenance costs.

The app also does not include a surge-pricing policy, which allows other e-hailing services to charge different rates based on real-time conditions like traffic and demand.

Payments are only be allowed via card and in-app transactions, too, which is another step towards reducing risk as it eliminates cash from the equation.

The new service will see an initial rollout in February with a limited number of drivers in South Africa’s major cities, with 5,000 operators in Joburg, 3,000 in Cape Town, 2,500 in Pretoria, and 2,000 in Durban.