Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - GoOpti (GoOpti – Profitable, Smart and Professional DRT over Long Distances)

Teaser

The huge expansion of air travel induced by deregulation of the EU commercial air market has brought important benefits, but only to some Europeans. Citizens from over 500 peripheral areas do not have easy access to major airports as it is extremely hard to build viable...

Summary

The huge expansion of air travel induced by deregulation of the EU commercial air market has brought important benefits, but only to some Europeans. Citizens from over 500 peripheral areas do not have easy access to major airports as it is extremely hard to build viable transportation businesses on these long-distance routes. GoOpti acted upon this opportunity, bootstrapped the first profitable demand responsive transportation (DRT) over long distances and disrupted the market with two innovations: dynamic pricing (aggregating demand) and guaranteeing rides to professional drivers (aggregating supply); thereby providing a reliable, comfortable and affordable transfer tailored to the needs of passengers.

By guaranteeing every ride and providing dynamic pricing GoOpti achieved market liquidity by effectively connecting supply and demand. It utilizes cloud assisted services focusing on yield management by using mathematical optimization models to optimize vehicle occupancy while trying to achieve lowest fare for passengers and revenue for carriers.

GoOpti’s business model has an enormous market potential, proven by more than 870,000 passengers transported to date, with an exceptional growth of revenue, and with a large interest of professional transport companies to join the platform. Our ambition is to build a global long-distance DRT involving the development of a multi-local digital marketplace, which is extremely challenging due to the fragmented and diverse social, political and regulatory environments.

The overall objective of project is to build a fast growing, profitable, smart and scalable data-driven DRT system by achieving two specific objectives:
1) Scaling-up the existing DRT model into a regional multi-local marketplace;
2) Validating the business model by demonstrating it on a remote region thus proving our potential to grow in a time and cost-efficient manner, and to find ways to repeat the process model systematically.

The expected outcomes of the project are:
• Developed and validated regional DRT as a basis for scalable expansion;
• Scalable IT system with data-driven and smart transport solutions for building a profitable multi-local marketplace;
• Established new regional hubs based on project goals and growth strategy;
• Validated process model and growth strategy for systematically launching in new regions that will give rise to high growth and enable us to address new markets in the future.

Work performed

WP1 - Business Development
1. Selection of hubs for piloting (Italy as adjacent market and Spain as remote market) based on the exhaustive market research
2. Verification of results of the selection process on site that required carrying out interviews with local stakeholders and contracting experts for running operations
3. Establishment of regional and central hubs, which included launching a pilot hub with a local team in Italy (Verona) and signing a contract with a franchise in Spain

WP2 - IT development
1. Local market integrations of specific regional services (accounting, tax, reporting) and languages into the IT infrastructure
2. Consolidation and optimization of the IT infrastructure by addressing deployment, security, scalability and reliability issues
3. New marketplace engine to shorten the last-minute gap
4. Big data management and data warehouse - scalable cloud architecture was designed, providing information for assessing the performance of each city and route.

WP3 - Impact management
1. Synchronizing business development and IT Development – going through the process of digital transformation, from being a transport company to having a platform business model
2. Transition into a fast responsive and customer centric culture - we formed a fast-response department for dealing with crisis situations, a Data Science team and an Advisory Board. Also EASME approved coaching was performed in December 2016
3. Project promotion through meetings, events, roundtables and workshops with selected stakeholders; social media promotions; media interviews
4. Dissemination aiming at lobbying for policy and legislative changes
5. Developing a growth strategy adjusted to new markets and customers

WP4 - Project Management
1. We established a Project Office that supervises and monitors project activities and progress, coordinates project actions, assesses risks and makes contingency plans
2. Day-to-day project management - monitoring actions and communicating with team members, checking the workflow and mitigating risks
3. Management of contractual agreements & IPR
4. Data Protection Plan - presiding over the data protection to ensure no personal data is misused

The main results are:
- Developed and validated regional DRT as a basis for scalable expansion
- Hub established in adjacent market (Italy) with 29 profitable routes
- Data architecture established that enables decision making (expansions strategy, termination of unprofitable routes, pricing policy changes, launching of new products)
- Scalable IT system with data-driven and smart transport solutions for building a profitable multi-local marketplace
- Drafted franchising manuals
- Remote pilot (Spain) launched with the hub in Cádiz and route between Cádiz and Málaga
- Updated Go2Market strategy

GoOpti’s growth model has been adjusted according to experience and lessons learned during the implementation of mentioned activities. In the first year we successfully achieved all objectives and milestones in time, and thus successfully scaled-up the existing DRT model into a regional multi-local marketplace that resulted in an updated Go2Market strategy. In the second year we will focus on validating the business model on a remote region, which will enable us to improve GoOpti\'s growth model and finalize the commercialization plan.

Final results

GoOpti is an award-winning disruptive cloud service (SaaS) of smart organization of passenger transportation that makes travel affordable by using innovative reservation system and dynamic pricing. The innovation provides an added value for users not only in Slovenia, but also in Italy and Spain, with reliable, safe, flexible and affordable travels, provided by professional drivers.

GoOpti’s novelty to Europe has positive impacts on travellers (reliable, affordable, door-to-door, flexible transfers), professional drivers (new predictable and profitable niche market) and the company (international expansion to 154 M€ revenue with a potential EBITDA of 18 M€ in 2019). In addition, the project provides a major step towards the Single European Transport Area, increases mobility, connectivity of people and places, sustainability of transport and the environment.

Statistics show that the GoOpti platform has so far provided transfers to more than 870.000 passengers and serves 47 cities around Europe. It connects 84 transport companies from Slovenia, Italy and Spain; triple the amount compared to data in April 2016. During project implementation, we have established 20 new jobs within GoOpti and generated more than 100 new employments for our partners. Based on our analysis, transport companies in our platform generate 3-times bigger turnover compared to before joining the platform.

We estimate the impact of our service is also shown in other statistics such as the number of people who would otherwise not travel (85,000), tons of CO2 saved (12,000), number of less cars on the road (250,000) and km saved (9,800,000).

Website & more info

More info: https://www.goopti.com/en/.