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SUBMITTED TO: Sir M. Irfan Afzal

SUBMITTED BY: Syed Saboor Ul Hassan

SUBMISSION DATE: 5th may, 2021

CLASS: MBA-3.5

SECTION: A

SHIFT: Morning

ROLL: 13319

SEMISTER: 6th
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Historical background 3

Nature of business 3

Competitors 3

Marketing strategies 4

Story of “Bykea” from COO 4

Website 7

Application 7

Conclusion 7
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Historical background
“Bykea” was started in December 2016 from Karachi, Pakistan. The company
currently operates in four major cities of Pakistan namely, Karachi, sindh,
Rawalpindi and Islamabad. In 2018 the company partnered with “jazz”, a Pakistan
based digital communications company to provide enhanced digital connectivity
and efficiency to users. In that same year “Bykea” and “Mahvash and Jahangir
Siddique Foundation” joined hands for bikers support scheme.

In 2019, “Bykea” successfully raised $5.7 million in series A, which mostly received
funding from local and international institutions. In the series B, ‘Bykea”
successfully secured an investment of $13 million from multiple investors in
September 2020.

Nature of business
The nature of business of “bykea” is transport. It’s very much similar to uber but it
has restricted itself only to bikes. In the view of its COO there are four times more
bikes in Pakistan then cars and our focus is to give them a chance to earn from
their bikes. This makes our market more vast. Further more in the midst of COVID
19 pandemic, due to governmental restrictions, the company has widened its
scope of services. It has also introduced services of delivery, bill payments, cash
deposits in different accounts and much more. This shows how flexible the
company is in diversifying its nature of business.

Competitors

“Bykea” entered in the Pakistani market at a time when the market had already
adopted other company’s services. Its direct competitors in the market were “
UBER” and “CAREEM”. These two companies were far more experie4nced and
larger then Bykea. Furthermore, the acquiring of Careem by Uber made it much
more discouraging for other small businesses about the shier strength and
magnitude of UBER. However Bykea had an edge in this regard. Science Bykea
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solely focused on transport via bikes, it was not considered much of a threat from
other companies. Slowly and gradually Bykea gained customer base and market
share by improving its services.

Marketing strategies
First of all the most commonly used marketing strategy by the company is cold
marketing. It hires a marketing agency and contracts with it for bringing new
customers. This is mostly customer app installation activity or biker driver app
installation activity.

Secondly ‘bykea” has also used digital platforms as well. The most commonly used
platform was YouTube and Face book. It also used its promotions in other
applications like easypaisa and jazzcash.

Another way of its marketing was through television. It used advertisements

including celebrities promoting it. One of the most notable personalities used in
its personality marketing was former Pakistan cricket team captain, Waseem
Akram.

Story of “Bykea” from COO

 What made you start Bykea?

The problem we set out to solve was transportation for the masses by the
masses. The masses, unfortunately in our country, cannot afford ride-hailing
services at a premium price, nor can they afford to buy a car. A bike is the most
expensive asset that most Pakistanis own and we wanted to provide them with an
opportunity to leverage their bikes to make an income.

Also, Pakistan has four times more bikes than cars, so the sheer market size made
them much more attractive.

 What expertise does each founding member bring to Bykea?

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Muneed Mayar is the founder of Bykea and handles the Operations and
Marketing. As the former co-founder of Daraz.pk, he brings to the table
experience in operations, marketing, logistics, and product development along
with his education in BA in Economics from the University of Virginia.

I am the COO, and I contribute with my experience as a supply chain management

professional.

Ishaq Kothawala, the CFO and CSO, has a background in Actuarial Science. He
spends the majority of his time on researching and brainstorming new ideas, app
developments, designing processes and app testing.

Abdul Mannan brings his years of experience as a developer in the software

industry and acts as the CIO at Bykea.

 What is the Bykea model? How is your model different from others?

We are the pioneers of bike hailing in Pakistan so we think we have a good

understanding of how this category works and thus far have managed to stay
ahead of the game. Being a local home-grown company with all its roots in
Pakistan enables us to solve local problems. We keep innovating and adding
verticals to our app to try and identify new opportunities that will set us apart
from our competition. We are not just a ride-hailing company anymore; we have
a platform that offers a multitude of services including delivery, purchases, food,
and tickets.

 When you started what was your intended audience?

The masses. The privileged have the means to find a private solution to all the
public problems in our country. The masses, on the other hand, have very little
recourse. Bykea was founded as a cheaper alternative to the conventional car-
based ride-hailing concept in Pakistan.
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 How has the audience changed with new features being added to the
app? Whom does your current customer base include?

We have definitely attracted more female customers with the new categories like
tickets and food, classifieds, jobs etc. However, our primary customer base has
not changed much. We still focus on the same segment.

 How do you incentivize your drivers?

Through flexibility and an incremental bonus on their weekly bookings. Ours is a

flex platform that allows drivers to drive at their own will with the ability to state
their desired destination as well. Drivers can work as many hours as they please
and can monitor their performance in the app itself.

 How has the venture grown since Bykea came out of the incubation
program? What can you tell us about your funding and revenue stream?
How do you intend to get further funding?

The business was seed funded by JS and Ithaca Capital, both local investors, and
we are now looking to raise more capital through international investors. Our
user app has been installed almost a million times and the driver-partner app has
been installed 100,000 times. The business continues to grow.

 You already have transport, courier services, food delivery, travel

reservations, utility payments and job advertisements supported by your
app. What other areas do you aim to venture into? What is your vision for
the future?

As our slogan says, “Har Zaroorat ki Sahoolat”, we want to be the go-to platform

for Pakistanis. In the coming months, you will notice updates to our food products
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category where we will add a catalog of meals that are both affordable and
delivered in a timely manner.

Website
 The first thing to notice on the home page of its website is its application
user interface. It has posted a small picture on the home page of its
website. With this picture there are pictorial links from which one can
download this application. Further more it has also used a small video
advertisement on its home page. This makes the home page more
attractive. The homepage also contains its vision, safety and about us
section.
 Secondly the home page has more links to other pages of its website at the
top right corner. These links contain information about its services, help
center and contact.

Application
Bykea application is available on both android and IOS operating systems. The
nature of this application is location based there for the application only runs if it
is given the permission to track location of the device.

Furthermore the license agreement clearly mentions that the application will
track device information like operating system version, IMEI number and certain
more details to improve the functionality of the application.

Conclusion
In a nut shell, Bykea is a user friendly application that allows its users a more
interactive experience. It’s also easy to use and no certain education level is
required to operate it.