It is now a matter of hours and Uber users can ride in matatus. Insider information privy to our sources revealed that Uber is now ready to venture into the chaotic matatu industry.
Uber and matatu journey started last year November, when the company announced to roll out a new service that will help users to book seats on minibuses.
The matatus that would apply are those that are 16 seater and above. Kenya’s matatu industry has mainly 14 seater, 33 seater-4.3 Isuzu models and 52 seater buses.
Customers will track their chosen matatus and ride once they arrive at the selected bus points.
The 33 seater dominate major routes and there is a high speculation that they are a niche for Uber. Critical decisions will be made by Uber to predict which routes their customers may prefer.
To optimize their market segmentation, Uber will have to rely on big data that it has harvested from the mobile apps.
Last year, Uber announced to have a ‘big amounts’ of data that could be used for city planning. Specifically, the data would be used to enhance Nairobi’s Bus Rapid Transit that is still under incubation.
Nairobi becomes Uber’s priority in matatu venture before the program is duplicated to Kampala, Uganda and Dar in Tanzania.
The move by Uber into matatus is a business retaliation to their competitor Little Cabs of Craft Silicon who rolled out Little Shuttle, similar to the to be Uber matatus.
