I love digital communication!
The Uber_Morocco Twitter account is a monument to positive soft communication…
But it comes as a bit of a surprise when they present it as a “victory” or a great achievement to have managed to get their parent company to attach Western Sahara to Morocco, even though it now appears as a separate country.
Because this “victory” is simply the fact of complying with Moroccan law. (It is forbidden, for example, to publish a map that shows Western Sahara as a separate territory, even in dotted lines, as GoogleMaps does).
And above all, because this “attachment” will take 10 days!
Those ten days were symptomatic, emblematic of Uber’s strengths and weaknesses. The strength: a large, well-oiled machine and a centrally-managed global ‘powerhouse’. The weakness: exactly the same thing.
I find it hard to understand, intellectually, why it takes ten days to change a list of places where Uber doesn’t work (in IT jargon, changing a hierarchy). On the other hand, in operational terms, I know very well why: on multi-country, multi-user applications like Uber, you don’t touch anything without planning, testing and counter-testing. In general, this procedure is perfectly valid. In this particular case, it makes you smile.
Above all, it shows how very difficult it is for an international system to bend to local constraints. Because, in reality, yes, having a major international group suppress a ‘geopolitical vision’ is a great victory. (Avito.ma, for its part, does not display a map at all, because of the same problem). And because this proclaimed deletion on social networks has earned it a bad buzz in other countries from supporters of independence for Western Sahara.
ITaxi: 100% adapted, 100% local, 100% Moroccan
When you talk to Tayeb Sbihi, one of the founders of Itaxi, the Moroccan taxi booking application, you can think of two things.
The first is this:
this is exactly what Uber should do to succeed in Morocco.
The second:
Yes, but it’s impossible!
In a way, ITaxi is the opposite of Uber Morocco: a local company, set up by a team with strong business skills and equally strong local skills, and which, unlike Uber, actually works with taxis.
ITaxis in brief
ITaxi started up on 21/09/2014, solely in Casablanca, and now, less than a year later, has 170 drivers.
Contrary to what has been said, this is not the “Moroccan Uber”, but the Moroccan “Taxi G7” with Moroccan Web 2.0 sauce (Taxis G7 are a big Parisian powerhouse, much criticised).
Indeed, the first essential difference with Uber is that the cars are small taxis, and completely legal. The only recourse to tourist transporters is for airport transfers, which small taxis are not authorised to do. The taxis selected are all recent cars, less than five years old.
The second, and very important, difference is that, as a central booking office, ITaxi offers several ways of ordering a taxi, including by telephone, and makes it possible to book a taxi in advance.
The application, available for Android and iPhone, has been downloaded more than 20,000 times.
The Call-Center employs 4 people, and the company has a total of 12 employees, including Tayeb Sbihi.
On average, 150 to 200 drives are made every day.
The same needs analysis, a totally different response
What’s amusing is what Tayeb Sbihi says
At the end of 2013, we started thinking, Uber was definitely going to come to Morocco one day, how can we be better than them?
The answer was:
- by really working with taxis, without bullshit marketing
- by improving the current situation
- by taking into account the local problems that we know about
- building a local application
“Safety” in the broadest sense
To be clear, in relation to the previous post, for me ‘safety’ means a car that’s not going to fall apart every time you turn the wheel, and a driver who knows how to drive and isn’t going to hold a knife to my throat to steal my wallet.
I’ve taken hundreds of taxis in Morocco. I’ve never been assaulted. Maybe I was lucky… (but in fact, I have the same much more positive view of French taxis than the average person, because we remember the problem much more than the dozens of journeys that went very well, and I haven’t joined in the recent taxi-bashing, for the same reasons).
On the other hand, yes, I’ve always triple-checked that I haven’t forgotten anything, knowing that I’d have virtually no chance of recovering anything important from a taxi (in Europe I always ask for the receipt to get the plate number, but hey…).
Yes, I’ve been lucky enough not to have to wait alone for a taxi at night in a lonely street where it sucks.
And, being lucky enough not to understand Arabic, I don’t mind being insulted (in fact, I don’t mind being insulted in French either…).
But all these points can be real problems.
Uber and ITaxi are responding to them.
With the added advantage, for ITaxi, of being able to book a taxi in advance.
Reasonable pricing
The ITaxi price is 10 to 15 dirhams more than the metered price, depending on the area of Casablanca and the time of day.
That’s not two or three times the price of a normal journey. And this is only possible by working with small taxis. The costs of large tourist vehicles are too high (petrol, insurance, maintenance, investment, etc.).
Let’s say you take one taxi a day to get home from work (in the morning you share the family car, you drop the kids off at school, etc.): with ITaxi, you’re looking at 220 to 330 dirhams a month. With Uber, the extra cost will be in the region of 650 to 900 dirhams a month. It’s not the same budget.
So for many Moroccans, ITaxi could be a daily solution.
There are a number of features in common with Uber: for example, sending a text message to the customer telling them which car is going to pick them up, which can be forwarded to someone else, and sending a satisfaction survey after the journey.
On the other hand, several points are different. It’s this understanding of the Moroccan reality that’s interesting, on the theme of “how to do business well in Morocco”.
The option of paying in cash
Giving people the option of paying by credit card is certainly a plus, but for small sums, cash is still the best option:
- it corresponds to the habits of Moroccans
- it avoids administration costs on a large number of small payments (which is undoubtedly why not all local credit cards are accepted by Uber today)
- it allows you to pay the taxi immediately (with no transfer charges in the other direction either…)
- and, finally, it’s also safer for the company, which doesn’t run the risk of having to deal with disputes over stolen or counterfeit credit cards, etc…
Controlling geolocation
Again, this is a Moroccan-Moroccan point, but just because you have a GPS and GoogleMaps doesn’t mean that the geolocation will be perfect.
Aside for non-Moroccan readers: street names in Morocco
Finding your way around Casablanca is like a treasure hunt. I’ve already described here how the streets have several names in Morocco and how the road signs are difficult to read.
Here, in El Jadida, it was the postman who taught us the name of our street (Nahj Marrakesh), as the owner of the building only knew the lot number on her deed of ownership, issued before the streets were laid out in the housing estate. To make matters worse, there’s also a “rue de Marrakesh”, which becomes a “route de Marrakesh” on the way to … Marrakesh. It has nothing to do with our “road”, which continues as the “road to Ouarzazate”, and which is “behind the hammam”.
GoogleMaps doesn’t help matters. The street names that appear on the map are either in Arabic or in European transcription, and this transcription is a bit “erratic”.
When I made the entry for Herboristerie Robert, in the phone book, I had to geolocate it “a la mano” on GoogleMaps, starting from a known landmark (the Twins, a large office building) and redoing the route I’d taken to get to the shop. In fact, the official address is 18 rue Al Kassar, but GoogleMaps doesn’t understand that. Or, to be more precise, it suggests the place where it ‘put’ the Herboristerie’s Google Address, which is rue El Mortada.
And why does Google make this mistake? Because it calls the ‘real’ Rue Al Kassar, in the correct transcription, Rue El Kasr. And that’s the only name that Uber recognises. A name that no Moroccan will ever use.
And that’s why geolocation in Morocco isn’t easy, unless you (re)construct an entire reference system based on local names.
So what does ITaxi do? It does what Moroccans do
Unlike Uber, ITaxi allows you to give an address, as we do here, in relation to a landmark, “50 metres to the right of Les Twins”, or one of those old street names that Casablanca residents often know better than newcomers. In fact, it’s sometimes part of the postal address, rue Al Kassar, ex-Wagram…
Because it’s a central booking office, with four people assigned to monitoring operations, it’s possible to gradually move the taxi, if it can’t find it, in relation to this landmark.
You might say, yes, but Uber geolocates mobile phones. Of course, but in this case, it means that you have to go down to the street to ‘order your taxi’, and the safety argument at night falls by the wayside (and yes, there are long buildings, with two exits, on two different streets, in short, you can’t do everything with geolocation…).
And what about language?
Managing language is not easy in Morocco. Tourists often have the mistaken impression that everyone speaks French.
But no… Morocco is an Arabic-speaking country, where ‘standard’ or ‘official’ Arabic coexists – the language of administrative papers, television and religion – and the language spoken on a daily basis, known as Darija (plus, to complicate matters, Berber).
Standard Arabic and Darija are as different as Italian and Latin.
Not all taxi drivers speak French, and many don’t speak standard Arabic either, or not well, and certainly don’t read it easily.
One of ITaxi’s great strengths is that it has developed an application in Darija. Accessible, therefore, to taxi drivers.
Meanwhile, even the Arabic version of Uber doesn’t recognise the Arabic name of Casablanca (in Arabic: الدار البيضاء , “White House”, which we would transcribe Dar Al Baïda). In the Arabic interface, you have to enter “Casablanca” in Latin characters to select the city (and needless to say, my Al Kassar street, whether in Arabic or “Latin”, is not recognised either).
The ITaxis drivers therefore have a tablet, which is supplied to them free of charge by the company (in exchange for a deposit), which is much easier to read than a mobile phone, and which ‘speaks’ to them in the language they use every day.
This may seem like a detail, since, from Uber’s point of view, the target customers don’t have this problem, and the tourist drivers, of course, are fluent in French or English.
In fact, this is a major competitive advantage: the ITaxi application does not require major modifications to be used by other types of driver (delivery, school transport, staff transport, etc.), which opens up major development prospects.
Working “with” taxis
Everything is done to make their lives easier. The ITaxi model is that taxis buy the number of rides they want in advance. They then receive the fare and the full commission, which they share with ITaxi. Internet connection costs are covered by the company. When they start up, they are offered a certain number of free rides, so that they can start their business without spending any money.
Meetings are organised every month, with a reward for the best driver (a mix between the number of journeys and customer ratings).
And today, the company is preparing a system so that drivers can benefit from the CNSS, even though they currently have no social protection. (Yes, #VisMaVie in Morocco, around 40% of the working population has no social cover).
It’s possible to remain 100% Moroccan
Morocco has become a favourite hunting ground for web multinationals. Economically dynamic, hyper-connected ‘in spite of everything’, close to Europe, a bridgehead for doing business in Black Africa (incidentally, I recommend that you read Afrimag, the online version of which we produced), and considerably more politically stable than its neighbours, Morocco is a country where you need to invest, particularly in the web, to gain a foothold before it’s too late.
Faced with these giants, it is possible to succeed locally, with a strategy like that of ITaxi. ITaxi wants to remain 100% Moroccan, so as not to become “a small dot on the map of a large international group”.
Today, this is possible. Compared with the classified ads war, where only marocannonce still manages to stand up to Schibsted, present via Avito and Bikhir, ITaxi has succeeded in rapidly raising Moroccan funds, enabling it to finance its development and resist Uber.
And it’s not by chance: selected from a large number of start-ups, shortly after its launch Itaxi received support from Microsoft, via 4Afrika. This initiative selects start-ups that create solutions in key sectors fuelling growth on the continent. This support has enabled the company to benefit from sufficient Moroccan funding to help it develop smoothly.
Soon, Marrakesh and Rabat will be on the agenda, followed by Agadir and Tangiers. Always with the same ‘Morocco’ adaptation.
It’s not that “booking a taxi online using a smartphone” is impossible in Morocco. But the way in which Uber is deploying its model, without being able to adapt it, is not making life any easier for it in the face of an already established competitor.
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