A South African cab-hailing app, uMeshasha wants to be both a ride-hailing service during peak periods and a delivery service.
uMashesha, a cab-hailing app based out of South Africa wants to be both a ride-hailing service during peak periods and a courier delivery service during off-peak hours.
Founded in 2017 by Christine Mesolo, the first female to own a ride-hailing company in South Africa, with over 20 years of experience in the transport industry, the app claims to have completed over 1000 trips in and around Pretoria, East London, Port Elizabeth, Cape Town, Polokwane, and Durban.
With bootstrapped investments of more than R3 million (over $200,000) and a short-term loan of R2.5 million (about $175,000) from a business partner, Mesolo believes that her offering stands out from the “mushrooming” number of such start-ups in South Africa because the company “values and respects” its drivers and also points out that the start-up helps its drivers with paying traffic fines.
According to Mesolo, the start-up which currently employs 30 full-time operational staff, 44 interns, has 1,500 drivers who are charged a commission of 14.5% on their earnings.
“It does not make business sense that we take a big chunk from full-time operational, but they have to pay for all other services like data, petrol, car service and liability insurances,” says Christine Mesolo.
Its vehicles are fitted with car tracking systems, panic buttons, and cameras, both inside and outside the cars. The company says they added that in case of
In addition to courier deliveries, the company plans to launch other services like grocery deliveries in the future as well as offer more locations across South Africa.
The app is available for download on the Google Play and Apple’s AppStore.
