Travelers with no private vehicles used to have only two airport transportation options. One, taking a taxi for a sizable fee. Two, taking a shuttle bus while lugging cumbersome baggage. Now, they can have access to a pick-up and drop-off service for the same fee as that of public transportation.
AirPoPo, launched this July, broke the conventions of airport pick-up and drop-off service. For no more than NT$500, a car is sent to pick you up at home and take you through the shortest path to the airport, picking up other passengers en route. In less than two months, over 10000 people have experienced this rideshare service, and it has won the Jury prize of IDEAS Show@APEC, defeating 9 foreign startup groups.
This innovative model did not come out of the blue, but from two brothers now in their thirties. And it took them five years of business building, overcoming setbacks that only made them stronger, to finalize this model.
Zeng Yan-hao and his older brother Zeng Ting-rui were born in Changhua, Taiwan, but moved to Canada in childhood. They were brought up in a traditional Chinese household, where not getting an “A” on a school subject meant punishment. And they both majored in engineering because their parents thought it would make job-finding easier. But the two brothers are rebellious in nature and have always wanted to start a business of their own.
They have set foot in more than 20 countries around the world and are brimming with innovative ideas for travelling. In 2011, they borrowed NT$ 1 million from their parents and co-founded “iBeengo,” an online travel-planning platform.
A charter car service that spans 23 countries
Less than 6 months later, seeing the cash flow was drying up, they refocused their business on the touring needs of Chinese exchange students in Taiwan. “Back in those days, the TV show ‘Kangsi Coming’ and pop singers like Jay Chou and the ‘May Day’ band were still immensely popular in China. The Chinese people were ‘addicted’ to everything Taiwanese.” Zeng Yan-hao flew to China to broaden customer base, holding over 50 seminars in three months. However, he only managed to secure three tour group contracts, with seven tourists in each group.
It turned out he overlooked the fact that most Chinese exchange students are from well-to-do families. But he found that many elderly ladies would hover around him after a seminar was finished and asked for more information about charter car service for travelling in Taiwan. Also, they would demand the drivers not to be the frivolous sort. Clearly, “transportation” could be good business.
In 2014, he and his brother launched “Ding Taxi,” an online platform for charter car ordering. It provides foreign tourists with price parity service, allowing them to determine the cheapest option among over 2000 cars in a particular time period.
“As an industry, tourism depends on the changing situations for its success. Typhoons, earthquakes, or terrorist attacks in a particular month means the business in that month is practically dead.” According to Zeng Ting-rui, there is nothing worse in tourism than betting on a single risk. So, six months after “Ding Taxi” went online, the two brothers sought actively to broaden overseas business, forging collaboration with charter car companies in 23 countries, including Japan, Korea, and Thailand.
But the promising prospect did not last long. The number of Chinese tourists in Taiwan this year is three-fourths less than last year. And the performance of“Ding Taxi” plummeted by 40 percent. It occurred to Zeng Ting-rui that he had read a news report on a shuttle bus app for a foreign hotel. An idea flashed in his mind: “Hotels in Taiwan generally do not offer shuttle bus services. Doesn’t this make airport transportation good business?”
So, AirPoPo emerged out of a tight corner and, coupled with the charter car resources of Ding Taxi, finally went on a trial run this June.
“There is nearly 40 million person-times leaving and entering Taiwan every year, and the need for airport-to-city transfer is great. Ding Taxi works with licensed car rental companies to service mid-to-long-distance passengers, making rideshare more acceptable to the market,” said Nice Cheng, who is partner at AppWorks, the biggest startup accelerator in Asia and the venture capital company in south east Asia that most focuses on the internet.
The company soars high from the New Taipei City
At first, the two brothers invested NT$1million for a one-month free ride, which is the biggest investment ever since they started business. However, little did they foresee that this also brought about the lowest business period for Zeng Ting-rui:“no one dared to take a free ride!” Given the daily throughput of the Taoyuan International Airport, there are at least 15000 people that need to go from the airport to Taipei every day. How could it be that not a single person used their service?
The key is that, for the citizens of Taipei, it is relatively convenient to go via transfer station (and therefore less inclined to “risk” trying new ways of transportation). But not so with the citizens of New Taipei. So, the two brothers lost no time in expanding their business into New Taipei City, and the weekly orders increased tenfold. Also, they can check at any time whether the cars sent out in a particular time period are filled and stop sending cars during shifts where passenger needs are nonexistent. As a result, their monthly revenue immediately went over NT$ 1million.
According to a charter car company owner, Mr. Wang, who has collaborated with the two brothers for over three years, customers leaving and going to the airport inclined to preorder cars, and this rideshare model has a price edge . Also, according to Zeng You-xuan, CEO of “RTM,” an innovative tourism NGO, Taiwanese people start travelling abroad at an increasingly early age, and mobile car-calling is definitely a trend.
Now that the Zeng brothers have earned a footing in the international market. Their next step will be striving to become the largest brand in the world for airport pick-up and drop-off services.
[By Yu-jing Huang / tr. by Meng-tsung Hsieh]