Johannesburg –The e-hailing company Bolt says it will ramp up initiatives to increase drivers on the platform as part of its key growth plans for the coming year.
Bolt says it expects increased demand on the e-hailing platform this year and it will need more new drivers to meet the demand.
Bolt South Africa's outgoing country manager, Takura Malaba, is expected to take up the Nairobi-based position of regional manager for East and Southern Africa soon.
Bolt SA has yet to hire a new country manager for South Africa.
Malaba said they were expecting at least 15% growth on the e-hailing service this year, and he was expecting at least a consistent increase on the platform's over 40 000 drivers to meet the demand.
“Growth is important for us, and as things currently stand right now we opened more channels of engagement with drivers.
“As things are, we have millions of unserviced rides, so if we accept that the industry can grow by 15% this year, we will need another 15% more drivers to meet the demand because demand is definitely growing on the platform, we are consistently seeing it,” he said.
Reflecting on the year 2022, Malaba, who sat with IOL in Parktown, said the previous year had been a good year and they had experienced consistent growth and demand on the platform.
Malaba said Bolt was a market leader in e-hailing in South Africa, saying they were edging out rivals Uber in the market.
Central to Bolt’s increased success in South Africa is the cash payments method, but some drivers have complained that cash puts them at risk from potential criminals.
Pressed on this, Malaba acknowledged that cash was a risk factor for driver, but he veered and said Bolt “understand the market it operates in”.
“We are market leaders and we were the first to take cash as a payment method.
“Excluding cash as a payment method would exclude a large part of the rider base,” he said.
Malaba also said they had measures which controlled how much cash a driver could get as the app would automatically switch to card payments only after a certain amount of cash was collected by drivers.
He said this was done to safeguard the driver from potential risk of owing the service too much money in service or commission fees, and also as a control measure to safeguard them from having too much cash in hand.
“As part of increasing rider and driver safety on the platform, in May last year we rolled out the rider selfie verification system,” he said.
Malaba said they were constantly working on machine learning model, which were able to flag potential risk factors - such as flagging new accounts with no bank cards added, first-time riders requesting rides in high-risk areas and riders who had high cancellation rates.
Malaba also said in March 2023 they were set to roll out driver verification selfie systems.
He said this programme has been piloted since November last year, and it will see the influx of rented driver profiles being dealt a blow.
Rented driver profiles have been an issue on the Bolt platform for years, with some drivers using the identity of other persons to earn a living on the app.
“We are happy with the work we have done on this system as it will check the drivers facial features against the government and Home Affairs database.
“Since we rolled out the pilot in December there have been no issues from drivers, so we are excited to roll it out to all our drivers from March,” he said.
Malaba explained that if a driver was caught using the identity of another on the platform, they would be blocked permanently from the platform and described the act as fraud.
“You have instances where people say for whatever reason that they cannot obtain their own PRDP.
“You find some cases where a driver is below 21 and they use their uncle’s driver profile to make a living, but we cannot accept that, we will be blocking those who take part in rented profiles and we will also work with the SAPS in cases of criminality where drivers rob riders, we cannot accept that,” he said.
Malaba, who has an honours degree in industrial engineering and an MBA from the Wits Business School, said Bolt has committed to spend over $900 million in Africa, with a significant amount set to be spent in the local market and they have plans to expand beyond the seven countries they are present in on the continent.
Bolt is currently available in South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ghana, Nigeria and Tunisia.
“We definitely have plans to add more countries on the continent,” he said, but would not say which countries were marked as priority.
He said his Nairobi came with a lot of responsibility, but as a young man at just 30, he was excited to be working for a fast-growing company which was giving rope to identify markets for growth and giving him freedom to implement his strategic objectives.
Malaba also added that he was keen on government regulation of the market, and said there was currently regulation in terms of operating licences, drivers licences and annual vehicle inspections which were required by law.
On the issue of taxi violence towards e-hailing drivers, which is usually from meter cab and minibus taxi drivers, Malaba said engagement was needed and said e-hailing companies had a role to play in the transport ecosystem.
“We all need to understand that we have a role to play in the transport ecosystem, because there are places that minibus taxis and buses can never reach that we can.
“We need to accommodate each other in this space and be more complimentary to each other,” he said.
IOL