With his e-hailing app PickUp Cab, Ntebatse Sekgodiso is solving the problem of reliable public transport in Limpopo. With time, he hopes to expand nationally.
They say “Necessity is the mother of invention”. And it is this thinking what drove Ntebatse Sekgodiso to create an e-hailing app called PickUp Cab to help solve the challenge of reliable transport in his rural hometown, Medingen Village in Limpopo.
Elated at the difference the app is making, Sekgodiso reminisces on what the process of conceptualising entailed. “We did not just want people to have reliable public transport, we also wanted to make it affordable for them. We also considered that our drivers need to wash and service their cars and buy petrol, so we need to charge reasonably.”
Sekgodiso and his business partner, Senzo Mkhize, started working on PickUp Cab in July 2020 and launched it on Google Play Store in late December. It has been operating ever since and is regularly updated and improved.
With his friend and business partner, Senzo Mkhize, relish playing a part in fighting unemployment. Thus far, Sekgodiso’s idea to provide reliable transport also created employment in the area is coming to fruition. People who lost their jobs as a result of the Coronavirus Disease lockdown became drivers.
Sekgodiso stresses that the company values the credibility of the prospective drivers. Accordingly, it employs a rigorous verification process to ensure passenger safety. “Relevant paperwork has to be supplied when drivers register their car, or their application is rejected. This helps us ensure that our drivers are legally allowed to transport people,” Sekgodiso explains.
Sekgodiso’s sense of fulfilment comes from that the thought that PickUp Cab is a proudly South African initiative, he says. “The money generated stays in our country, so I can proudly say our app is contributing to the economy.”
PickUp Cab’s drivers operate in Kgapane, Lenyenye, Nkowa, Tzaneen, Turfloop and Polokwane and get 10% of the cost of the trip.
With time, Sekgodiso hopes to expand the business beyond Limpopo. “We would like to see PickUp Cab operating nationally in the near future. The long-term goal is to operate in other African countries and contribute to the economic growth of Africa as a whole.”
The moral of Sekgodiso’s success is the dividends of patience, persistence and purpose. It is the result of years of technological trial and error. He first developed his first website in high school and has not looked back.
To download the app, search PickUp Cab on Google Play Store.
Credits: Adapted for Transform SA Online from an article originally published on Vuk’uzenzele
