Case study based on ‘Pathao’

Mkt 302
Section: 3
Date of submission: 22 March, 2021

Prepared by:
★ Group 8 ★

1) Md.Nur-E-Masfiq Hossain (1810909)

2) Md.Sobhan Kahfil Wara Uddin
Chowdhury(1710651)
3) Amit Das Dipto (1810874)
4) Mahadi Rahman (1831223)
5) Salman Azad (1731418)

Submitted to: Mr. Syed Imamuzzaman(Professor of

business school)
 Summary
This is a story of a company with a large amount of foreign investment all began with a
dream and a few bike to deliver parcels in the city called Pathao. When everyone was
shocked and asked why Pathao is in a cash pinch, industry sources pointed to the business
itself, concluding that the beast has become too large to handle. Winning the confidence of
their customers has been a struggle for the organization, and evidence indicates that their gut
instinct is right. When many accidents where happening Star Weekend saw a data, where the
vast majority of drivers who have signed up for the company's app do not have valid driver's
licenses, national identification cards, or vehicle registration documents. When Pathao was
struggling with those within a year their competition Shohoz rose up and was gathering
customers trust with their branding everywhere. Though Pathao was trying their best with
many campaigns there has been no immediate increase in the number of users
using Pathao. After they wasted money in wrong promotion methods they understood they
need to look at inside not outside then they saw hired so many employees even they didn’t
need much and started terminating because they know startups fail when they run out of
resources, and the most important expense is human resource.  

Impact on ‘Pathao’ and on the consumers

According to me the impact on pathao and its consumer would be significantly noticeable.
The issues from wrongful termination to poorly managed riders due to not receiving proper
cooperation from the government regarding verification of the riders’ information are causing
a significant uproar. Pathao’s poorly thought out layoff strategy is causing huge problems as
the employees are losing their faith in the company thus causing poor workflow and lack of
enthusiasm and creativity As pathao has a lot of foreign investors they seem to be in a bind as
they have to become compliant. After losing funding as they couldn't impress the investors
because no new revenue was being generated. This made them downsize causing further
work environment disruption. Incidents like these scored a significant amount of negative
publicity that may hamper future consumer growth and also future hiring issues. The issue
regarding the safety of the consumers also came to light. Due to not getting proper
cooperation from the government regarding the verification of the riders’ information it’s
been hard for pathao to verify their originality and is also becoming a challenge to insure the
consumers’ safety. As sources say that a good number of pathao riders have either learner’s
permits (not having proper restrictions from BRTA) or have issues regarding keeping their
documents updated. This is causing a decrease in consumer numbers which in turn is also not
helping in generating any new revenue. Overall from the high employment rate to layoffs or
poorly managed hiring; these sorts of problems are what’s causing a negative impact on both
pathao and its consumer.

 
 

Problems
‘Pathao’ started as quarrier service company in Bangladesh and after they started with the
bike transportation service, everything seemed to change for them. They started growing big
rapidly and got huge fundings from investors. As ‘Patho’ was the first mover of this service,
the company got some advantages as well. But in the meantime, they also did some mistake.
As the company was growing faster, they employed unnecessary people and when they
realised about that they started firing the employees even going against the law. The riders of
‘Pathao’ were also not skilled. Most of the riders had no documents which is required to be a
‘Pathao’ rider such as; license, NID etc and because the riders weren’t skilled enough bike
accident became a daily occurrence on the road of Dhaka city. Slowly people started to lose
faith from ‘Pathao’. On the other hand, ‘Shohoj’ which is one of the biggest competitors of
‘Pathao’ started to grow big because of their marketing campaigns and to compete with them
‘Pathao’ also came up with some marketing activities which were huge fails.

Solution
‘Pathao’ needs to redeem themselves or in easy words they have to perform some marketing
activities which can help them to gain their trust back among the customers and to compete
with the competitors. They should perform such campaigns where they will actually turn their
unskilled riders into skilled rider which is very important for the safety of the passengers and
also to compete with their competitors, they need to provide more facilities to their
customers, such as; vouchers, discount card, etc. This will also make the brand image of
‘Pathao’ stronger and the customers will slowly become loyal to the company.