South African startup Shesha aims to disrupt the established e-hailing landscape, largely dominated by international giants like Uber and Bolt, by providing a local alternative using its understanding of local conditions.
Founded this year, Shesha owes its origins to the fact that it “became apparent that – not only from a customer perspective, where safety and an understanding of local needs was not necessarily high on the agenda of its competitors – but that drivers felt exploited and under-appreciated by what they saw as foreign companies that were not paying attention to their working conditions”.
This is according to spokesperson Nomsa Mdhluli, who told Disrupt Africa that the company was making safety concerns its number one priority.
“Shesha verifies the identities of everyone on a Shesha trip from the customer to the driver, ensuring that they are indeed who they say they are. A second opportunity existed when we realised that drivers, as a pivotal cog in the wheel, felt that they were not part of the business they are servicing and generating profits for,” she said.
The startup is funded by numerous stakeholders including the Gauteng Taxi Industry Trust, Santaco Gauteng and the Gauteng National Taxi Alliance, which Mdhluli said gives it an “intimate understanding of local conditions”.
“It has allowed us to broker a historic understanding of peaceful co-operation between the taxi and e-hailing Industries, bringing to an end years of low-level conflict over routes and passengers,” she said.
The company is in the process of onboarding over 13,000 drivers, and claims its customer uptake has been “phenomenal”.
“We’re only operating in Gauteng for now as our proving ground, but we do have expansion plans in future for other provinces. But as you will be aware launching a disruptive startup is not easy, especially when it is a “David vs Goliath” scenario and the landscape is dominated by giants,” said Mdhluli.
“But, that said, we believe our market differentiator provides us with a competitive edge – in fact our presence has already resulted in one of our competitors de-platforming over 6,000 drivers deemed unsafe. Rest assured these drivers would never have made it onto our platform in the first place!”
Shesha monetises via the traditional e-hailing model, providing competitive prices.
