In Ethiopia, the current ticket system in place is very inefficient taking up to hours to reserve a ticket on a transport and Arada Services will want to capitalize on this window of opportunity, given that the usage of mobile is fast increasing and the infrastructure exist there already.
The service is at this stage directed to the Ethiopian, or East African market, but the team has done benchmarking on bus ticketing systems from e.g. Helsinki, Perth and London, keeping in mind that the industry is very context-specific.
Arada Services came to be after an iterative process involving feedback from the Garage coaches and an earnest scrutiny of the team’s core competences. The group was initially chosen to the Summer of Startups program with an altogether different idea, SMS-based social media updates, and some other ideas in the works included an RFID lost-and-found application as well as a waterpipe bar.
Watch below the winning pitch from August 27th Demo Day. Congrats to the team again and good luck on future endeavors!
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waiting 5 hours / day or month
if its per day then it sounds crazy and not true
if its per month then i don’t see any issue
what are you trying to address really
besides sms based payment is not possible currently in ethiopia and therefore it sounds even more daunting
Hey Yekereme,
Just imagine how much time you spend to go to Merkato a.k.a atobis tera… and buy regional tickets…to go to Bahir Dar or Gonder or Mekele. Taking a bus or taxi…depending on ur capacity, it is more than five hr a day man. Then it happens that, you may reach your cue but off working hr and returned back empty handed…This happens to most people at least I know. Well they are trying to address this gap in a smooth and swift way.
I am not trying to answer your Qs or misunderstanding, But again they didn´t say SMS based payment is available in ET. What they are trying to do is, this portfolio will be presented to relevant bodies back home, ETC; Transport operators and others, and see how it can be done. It is not a simple work and a simple response they might get, gen atleast these guys are trying a best way to address our problem-
Viva Arada services and I wish you all the besttttttttttttttttttttttttttt!
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