Remembering the times when we had to stand in a queue to book a taxi, who would have thought that few years down the line the entire market would be in the palm of our hands? To deal with the love-hate situation between new-age aggregators and traditional transport industry, TYGR has come up with an idea to bring every transporter on an app-based platform. In an exclusive interaction with Akshay Kumar, Aditya Poddar, CEO, SaveturGroup (TYGR is the flagship product of Savetur) shares his vision and expansions plans.
Tell us about the brand TYGR
Pilot launched three months back; we are trying to remodel the whole transportation system. Whenever someone talks about transport aggregator, the first thing that comes in mind is Uber or Ola which I consider are for premium passenger segment. However, there is a mass market of meter taxis, auto rickshaws, bike taxis etc. who is always protesting against Ola, Uber and other similar brands. Therefore, instead of asking them to share their revenue with other companies, we want to provide them a platform, which is similar to other taxi-booking apps. The most important thing is that the customer directly pays to the driver and not through us, eliminating the waiting period to get the drive fare. In logistical vertical, we are trying to remove the intermediaries who come in between when someone is booking a truck.
What is the USP of your brand?
Unlike aggregator models, TYGR does not try to control payments and plan to own the local transport ecosystem. Instead, it focuses on making the existing logistics environment more efficient and productive through our automation platform and takes a small subscription fee from vehicle owners.
Why did you choose to franchise the model instead of raising funds?
The reason why we chose franchising is that we want to expand as quickly as we can across the country. Secondly, we want to grow more organically through franchise route, because once you start taking funding then you have to subsidize and incentivize the whole system and you will never be able to make a healthy business out of it.
Share with us the major challenges you face
The kind of customer group we are targeting is heavily unorganized and not very mobile friendly. These people are still following the old traditional way of working and we wanted to change that. Because we know that one day eventually, the market is going to move from a physical to an app-based marketplace. Therefore, to make them learn about the app system and to convince them about the profitability is the greatest challenge that we face.
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Investment: Rs 25 lakhs for Master Franchise and Rs 5 lakhs for Cluster Franchise
