CarWale founder and CEO MohitDubey and his friend Vinayak Bhavnani has worked in the business of car buying and selling for more than a decade. They knew that not more than 10 percent of the Indians would own a car or any kind of public transportation in their lives. All this made them focus on the public transport and think of the different ways to make the everyday facility simpler and convenient for the population of the country. The result came to be Zophop which Vinayak started in the year 2014.
They believe that this can bring down the daily commute time of people by 15-20 minutes everyday by giving them necessary information and transaction features. Even the app is available on Google PlayStore and provides information to 15 different cities that include Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, and Chennai among others.
Zophop raised its individuality in early 2015 from various entrepreneurs and investors like Satyan Gajwani, Anupam Mittal, Amit Singhal and PK Gulati. It is a trip planner for local trains of Mumbai, other bus routes, and metro. The company also provides information on local bus stops and stations near you, added by Vinayak.
Vinayak got graduated in Computer Science from IIT Delhi in the year 2012, and after that, he joined Directi and there worked on the mobile products and voice process for almost two years before starting with Zophop in 2014.
The other founder, Nikhil is a graduate in Economics from the University of Delhi and also done MBA from FMS, Delhi. He has given his six years to Morgan Stanley’s banking team in which he covered technology, real estate and automotive.
Problems that people face daily
If you don’t know anything about the timings of arrival you are screwed up and this is the most fundamental challenge for all the commuters. Research has shown that the average wait for the bus is more than the 15 minutes. In the era of services that are on demand, long waits have resulted in falling off the public buses. It can be assumed that a daily commuter spends at least eight work days a year waiting for a bus.
Zophop allows its users to track the arrival and position of the bus on any route. You just need to use the GPS location for all the stops. Another natural thing that we have included in the app is that the commuters can purchase their bus tickets as well.
Expansion of the business
The company Zophop has tied up with more than ten transport service providers to offer information or ticketing. They are also partners with Uber and Jugnoo for cab booking in India and Zophop till now has witnessed more than 3 lakh downloads.
With only the team of 15 people, Zophop is presented in 15 different cities but at the various stages of development. We have the most ticketing or data in Mumbai, and near to its suburbs, Kolkata and Nagpur said by Vinayak.
Zophop has also planned to bring 1, 00,000 buses on the platform in the next two to three years as well as they will also provide the users to choose and combine the buses with other means of transport.
Vinayak also stated that almost 400 million public uses the transport and spend $85 billion in purchasing the tickets. They are here to solve the problem and will be able to monetise all the services. Vinayak also added- when we offer to track and expected thearrival of the buses along with the tickets or passes on themobile app, we make 2-4 percent of the ticket value that’s a roughly $1.5-3 billion of revenue market for us.
A growing industry
As said by the Indian vehicle tracking and fleet management market report for the year 2013-17, Indian market vehicle tracking is set to be double in size in the year 2017. India is expected to invest around $1 trillion in the development of infrastructure and constructing an additional 15.000 km of highways by the year 2017, fleet management and tracking in India will see a rise in demand. The high demand for the fleet management and tracking is coming from the industry markets like mining, construction, logistics and employees transportation.
Looking at the opportunity of a huge market, startups are getting bigger day by day with the innovations around fleet manage,ent solution. For example, Locatera helps the school manage the buses in a more simple way through their tri-app method. Fleetrovers allow businesses to monitor and control their fleet. Heuristics is something that is a GPS based vehicle tracking system and also the mobile based tracking personnel solutions.
Zophop is acting as a public transport assistant to every Indian. We are on our way to having buses in lakhs of numbers on our platform for ticketing in the next 2-3 years. We will also provide the users with the options to choose and combine the buses with other means of transport, said Vinayak.