Making it easy to get on your bike
A Perth startup has created the Uber for scooters and mopeds.
UBER and Airbnb may have succeeded as much from their timing as their original peer-to-peer asset sharing concept.
Amid the disruption and destruction of the 2008 GFC came a way to earn extra cash from your car or a spare room in your house. As people were being made redundant, the gig economy was ushered in.
At the same time, a cheaper, more flexible way of travelling across town and staying at a destination was introduced.
Both arrived in Australia in 2012 amid our own relative economic slowdown.
Today, Uber and Airbnb are the largest taxi and accommodation businesses on the planet, yet they own no cars or hotel rooms.
Meanwhile, new versions have kined the sharing economy, such as Uber Eats and DoorDash (food delivery), Airtasker (tasks), hipages (tradies), Camplify (caravans and motorhomes) and Spacer (storage).
It is estimated that around so per cent of Western Australian workers have participated in this sharing economy at some point in their careers. In Australia, Uber Eats has 59,000 registered workers, which exceeds the largest employer In WA. For comparison, the WA Department of Education has about 40,000 employees.
The club in this state now has a new member in Perth-based scooter and bicycle share platform Ryder’s Xchange. On the website, Perth people with a bike or moped can loan it out to someone such as a DoorDash or UberEats driver and earn some spare cash.
Visitors to Perth can explore the city on an electric motorbike from $100 an hour or a cute soce moped from Sa a day.
It’s one step up from those orange or blue e-scooters you have seen on zipping amand Perth or Scarborough, or buzzing you on hike paths.
As with Uber, Ryder’s Xchange owns no vehicles and supplies the online marketplace for this transportation transaction to occur.
Founder Sonu Daniels has been running it for more than two years. A friend pitched him the idea of a
comventional scooter rental business, which is how they started, but Mr. Daniels realised the real value would he in the platform, not owning the vehicles
Plus, it can give owners extra money. When’s the best time to launch an asset-sharing scheme? During a cost of living crisis.
“A nine-to-five [job] isn’t cutting it for most people anymore,” Mr Daniels told Business News.
“They need a second income stream, whether that’s to travel, save for a house, or just keep up with the cost of living. At the same time, travellers coming from overseas or interstale need affordable, Bexible transport.”
From idea to launch took about a year, with bonds and insurance being the biggest problem to solve.
“We started by renting our own fleet to test demand,” Mr Danielu said.
Demand was clearly there and the business became profitable, but moved to a peer sharing platform in order to scale.
“Today we have active hosts, one of which is building their whole business around the platform.” Mr Daniels said.
“That was the validation we needed”
Mr Daniels chaims to be the only true peer-to-peer platform in Perth for bikes and scooters.
“We’re showing people the return they can generate by buying a bike specifically for rentals, he said.
“And we’re talking to owners with Likes already sitting in the garage about tarming them into income.”
Given Mr Daniels had run a website development business, building the platform was not the issue. As with all startupe, the key will be in whether it can gain traction and scale tevenue long term.
“The next 12 months will be about ‘owning WA: Perth, Bunbury. Busselton, Geraldton,” he said.
“We’re focused on growing riders and hosts and building real awareness in our home market.
“After that, the plan is to expand into a new Australian state mughly every six months. We want to be operating across Australia within two to two-and-a-half years.”
After that, Ryder’s has plans to go international and become a platform. to rent out any unused amet, beyond bikes and scooters.
Charlie Gunningham has spent 25 years in WA’s startup sector, is on the WA government’s Innovation Advisory Board, and is chair of Startup WA.