Obviously, apart from Swvl, Hive is a new startup making some big noise in Egypt’s ride-hailing industry. With over $400,000 in seeding funding, the Cairo-based startup would be looking to help Egyptian kids have their feel of the growing ride-hailing industry. To put the facts straight, the startup has to be the first in the world with this idea.
“Hive aspires to create a social impact and contribute towards the development of kids by helping improve their lives. We’re cutting down the time that they would normally spend in their school commute and are offering them safe, reliable and comfortable transportation on a daily basis,” says Mohammad Aboali, co-founder and CTO of Hive.
Here Is The Deal
- Hive’s $400,000 latest investment came from Abdelmoneim Al-Adawy, an early Hive adopter who has been using the service for his children since its launch.
- The startup plans to use this investment to further improve its product focusing on safety and scale.
A Look At Hive
Founded in 2018 by Abdelrahman Osama, a UX consultant with 20 years of experience, and Mohamed Aboali, who has built different tech products in his career of over 20 years, Hive connects comes with over 20 years of experience of building different technology products, Hive offers subscription-based safe ride-hailing solutions for kids.
The startup has completed over 6,000 trips last school year (September 2018 to June 2019) transporting children to 14 schools in Cairo. It also disclosed it is experimenting with ride-sharing service for kids where parents who have extra space in their cars take other children to school (and back home) and make some money in the process. These rides are 40 percent cheaper than what parents have to pay for regular Hive rides but in this case, there are no contingency captains.
According to Abdelrahman Osama, the co-founder and CEO of Hive, school transportation is only the first phase of Hive’s strategy. Eventually Hive hopes to become the platform for all types of kids transportation
“Hive was born with the vision of becoming the first ride-hailing startup for kids providing them the safety and comfort they need. It serves a large segment as 43.7% of the Egyptian population is under 19,” says Osama.
Read also: Egypt Is Setting Up 7 Technology Parks Across The Country And Launching A $50m Fintech Fund
How Hive Works
- To use Hive, parents would first download the app, register themselves, and add the children schools and their home address, and some details about the child(ren).
- Hive then receives the requests and creates a group of four children living nearby going to the same school. Hive’s staff then assigns a captain for this group and arranges a meeting between the captain and parents where all the documents including copies of license, national ID, drug tests, and criminal records are present to the parents.
- Once accepted, parents pay a small upfront fee and the subscription is activated with the rest of money paid by parents in six monthly installments.
- The captain takes children to school and brings them back home on a daily basis.
- The parents can track all the rides on the app.
- The startup uses a distance-based pricing model with different slabs so parents are supposed to pay the fee based on how far they live from the school.
- Parents are however required to pay only a portion of fee in advance and the rest in instalments instead of paying the lump sum amount in advance which is how most of the transporters and schools charge in Egypt.
The children using Hive (on average) spend a lot less time in their commute than those who use a school bus as the cars on Hive’s network transports only four children at a time (in some rare cases when requested by parents, they transport five children but compensate it with discounts).
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world