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Last Friday, HerRyde, a woman-only ride-hailing company, launched in Abuja. On a call with TechCabal, HerRyde’s co-founder and COO, Muhammad Muazu, declared that the company’s plan is to provide a safer option and a more comfortable experience for female drivers and riders.
When asked about the reason behind starting a company that will only serve a niche audience, Muazu said the company’s idea came from an encounter his aunt had had with a male driver from one of the popular ride-hailing companies. The driver had accepted a ride from her, and after taking too long to locate her, she cancelled the ride. The driver located her still, just to say to her: “if you were my wife, I would have beaten you for keeping me waiting.”
Social media platforms are often rife with tales of physical assault, sexual assault, and robbery suffered by women while on rides. TechCabal also asked Abuja women how they feel about finally having a women-only cab-hailing service. One of them, Boluwatito Sanusi, a publishing assistant based in Abuja explained that she often feels unsafe in cabs. Every time she’s on a trip, she makes sure to sit behind the driver and to share her location with someone else. A women-only platform like HerRyde sounds like a good idea to her.
HerRyde’s Chief Product Officer and co-founder, Kamaldeen Ibrahim, told TechCabal that the company chose to launch because Abuja has a high Muslim population. For many Muslim women in the city, their value system makes them uncomfortable being in the same vehicle alone with a male stranger. He added that they spoke to existing female drivers in the city and the majority of them were keen on the idea, thereby signalling that Abuja was a feasible market for their app. The team found that compared to Lagos and its numerous licenses it demands from drivers and ride-hailing apps, Abuja had fewer barriers to entry. Ibrahim’s experience as a former product manager at Opay who helped build the ORide product was invaluable in the development of HerRyde.
In a 2019 study on women-only ride-hailing platforms, researchers from the UCLA Anderson School of Management and Hong Kong Polytechnic discovered that because there is a smaller pool of drivers available, these services are typically more expensive and of lower quality.
In response to these potential challenges of cost and quality, the two co-founders said that the company will determine fares the same way Uber and Bolt do, based on time and distance, instead of using InDriver’s approach, a ride-hailing platform that allows users to negotiate their final fare.
While testing out their product on Tuesday and comparing it to Uber, TechCabal found that a ride from Asokoro General Hospital to Gwagalada Central Mosque was estimated at N5,028 compared to Uber’s N6,050.
