Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - TAG (Crowd-Sourcing technology to change how people and cars move in cities)

Teaser

We started TAG project 18 months ago with an ambitious objective: developing the world’s first truly peer-to-peer urban transport solution which is also market ready. At the end of the project we can proudly announce that we\'ve successfully achieved this goal. The funding...

Summary

We started TAG project 18 months ago with an ambitious objective: developing the world’s first truly peer-to-peer urban transport solution which is also market ready. At the end of the project we can proudly announce that we\'ve successfully achieved this goal.

The funding provided by the H2020 SME grant enabled us to carry out many critical tasks. As a result, we have been able to mitigate technological and market related uncertainties. In terms of technical capability, habit forming usability, and live lead user-base (ready to take it to the next-level at launch) TAG is ready to go forward.

TAG is now able to start its commercialization stage and get support from private sector companies. As a first step we have agreed on a $1.5 million partnership deal with Turk-Telekom, the largest Telecom Company in Turkey. Using this support, we\'ll reach an estimated audience of 1 million people and acquire 150.000 users. Based on our projections, that will bring TAG to break-even and financial sustainability before the end of 2017.
The summary of the work carried out:

Our aim for the grant was to prepare TAG for the pre-commercialization stage, rather than a performing theoretical engineering project with no market potential. To do so we followed an applied R&D methodology where we kept close contact with the people (i.e. crowds/ that are the potential users of TAG when it is complete). Almost every single feature of TAG was tested with real users during development which we refer as Field Operating Tests (FOTs). We ran FOTs in 15 cities reaching more than 26,000 testers in total, in order to iteratively improve our app-features and fine-tune our market uptake steps.

As a result of the FOT driven development process, TAG is now sufficient to address the following requisites for success:

• Ease of use: i) Improved pick-up experience ii) live trip prediction iii) total journey planning integrated with public transport iv) artery-based launch system
• Operating model: Developed a new pricing model & p2p payment system
• Safety: Created a launch model that seed from colleges to the neighbourhoods, ensuring safe networks

In terms of dissemination; TAG has received interest from various organizations both in Turkey and in Europe. We\'ve been covered in both national print and broadcast media. Also we\'ve presented in 12 events invited by EASME, TUBITAK, National Transport Organization, City of Istanbul and finally even by the Prime Minister\'s Office in Turkey.

Work performed

As we mentioned in the first phase of the project, creating a seed carpoolers community in target pilot areas and improving UX/UI by integrating innovative approaches into the app was our initial goal. In the next step, optimizing route matching, providing a better payment medium, and understanding user behaviour to offer better and customized ride alternatives are some of the major technical subjects in the second phase of the project. Thus, we can say that we have fulfilled almost all of these goals by i) creating a total journey planner, ii) building detection and triggering mechanisms for passive users, iii) developing gamification based user engagement tools, and iv) providing enhanced feedback mechanisms for riders and drivers.

During the pilots, the aim of using social media was mainly due to its excellent profile targeting. Our goal is not to reach a large number of people during pilots. Our main goal is to reduce coverage geographically and demographically while creating a potentially dense user pool with homogeneous characteristics in order to test the features we have developed.

Therefore, the pilots were supported with direct marketing activities and outdoor ads when necessary. Furthermore, we have used e-mailing, notifications, and retargeting on the net and social media to retain pilot users and test the engaging abilities of our gamification components and product features. As for launching, we are extending the coverage of outdoor ads for the new districts we are targeting and support it with media purchasing in radio, mobile, social and digital.

TAG’s communication audience consists of three different groups of potential users and its stakeholders: i),University Students, ii) Daily Commuters, iii) Occasional users (Travel, events, trend followers). In the field, our primary aim was to educate the audience about ride-sharing facts and economy. This allowed us to build a society around the term “crowd sourced ride-sharing”. Now, these people are our spokes-people (seeds) in social media when we argue with the authorities in order to attain socio-economic benefits for the users of TAG and/or other similar apps.

During this surge period, the messages given to the audiences aims to ignite action for user journey planning: Hearing about TAG, downloading TAG, registration, building up for a line, setting up an actual ride, sending a request / accepting a request, sharing the ride, paying for the ride > saving money, inviting friends, repeating the cycle. On the other hand, our communication mix is covering all pilot cities during the launch period, targeting the first two target audience groups (universities and daily commuters).

Final results

Providing a low-cost and a sustainable alternative for urban transport was quite a difficult objective when we kicked-off TAG project 18 months ago. Today, there is still not a single market-successful carpooling operation in the world. On the contrary we\'ve seen several major players quitting this ambition, specifically:

• Google-Waze shut down its Tel-Aviv operations and migrated to the Bay Area for a new trial 10 months ago. Yet still no news of market success mentioned.
• LYFT shut down LYFT-carpool service only after 5-months of market operation.
• UBER is reportedly making $250 million in losses every quarter, because of subsidizing 60% of every ride (to make it cheap for the passengers). Not a sustainable approach in the long-term.

At TAG, we have been developing a “truly sustainable” model in terms of purchasing power and user desirability. Most Uber-like models have to raise their prices to taxicab levels in the mid-term (when the subsidies are cut and taxi license costs are fully-loaded), therefore those will never be viable for the people at the bottom of the income pyramid (the real traffic).

On the other hand, because we target the “zero-cost” empty seats – we have been working on making it “desirable” for those drivers to share them, while still making it financially viable for the passengers – which is a complex problem as we detailed out in the report. And in this context, we were successful in creating a functioning urban carpooling society around TAG model who use TAG in their daily commutes.

Although the numbers are small – they were remarkable enough to prove that TAG model is ready for the market launch. Now it is possible for TAG to start its commercialization stage and get support from private sector companies. As a first step we have agreed on a $1.5 million partnership deal with Turk-Telekom, the largest Telecom Company in Turkey. Using this budget, we\'ll reach an estimated audience of 1 million people and acquire 150.000 users. Based on our projections, that will bring TAG to break-even and financial sustainability before the end of 2017.

Also we\'ve provided part-time jobs to 165 people in the cities of Ä°stanbul, Ankara, Brussels, Antwerp, Rotterdam, and Stockholm.

Website & more info

More info: http://www.tagmobil.net/.