National Tickets Business Development Director, Macmilan Murebwa, and Chief Operating Officer, Farai Madzara
If you use buses to connect between cities frequently, or just use them to occasionally travel to neighboring countries, you’ve probably been waiting for an online bus ticketing service that works so it does away with the frustrations of booking and paying for a ticket. A new startup addressing that problem, National Tickets, may be it.
Their service makes it possible for travelers to buy bus tickets – that is select a route, a preferred bus, select a seat, and pay for it – via the web, a phone call, SMS, or through agents to be found at shopping centres around the country. In the case of the call or SMS method, the payment is made using mobile money services like EcoCash, Telecash and NettCash, otherwise, on the web, it’s all major cards and local mobile money solutions.
Macmillan Murebwa, business development director at National Tickets, is clear about the problem they are addressing;
The Zimbabwean transport system has always been centralized with tickets only being available on the day of travel when you visit and one is not guaranteed of a seat with the service provider of one’s choice….the congestion at the site and harassment by touts and vendors, notwithstanding the time one has to spend queuing to make the purchase and/ or enquire about available seats and ticket prices
He pretty much summarises my own frustrations with buses and why as much as possible, I try to use alternatives. And this means one important thing; not only do they make it easier for people that rely on buses to travel, they may actually increase the number of travelers significantly by attracting those that avoided bus travel altogether. This growing-the-pie effect makes National Tickets quite valuable to bus operators, whom they need more of for the service’s usefulness.
National Tickets has so far signed up two major bus operators, Intercape and King Lion, effectively securing most of the busy local and regional routes. Harare to Plumtree; Harare to SA; Harare to Lusaka, Harare to Windhoek. Murebwa told us they are finalising agreements with more operators and will be introducing new routes soon.
Signing up operators hasn’t been easy, he said, “After trying to sell the idea we discovered that most bus operators in the country where not computerized.” Murebwa said they had to introduce applications on the operator’s end that would integrate with National Tickets’ platform to make buying and paying for tickets seamless for travelers. Convincing partners to start using new applications is no stroll in the park.
The proposition to the operators is clear though: there’s the obvious new convenience for travellers (and even the operator) that online ticketing brings, but there are also additional valuable things like being able to plan their schedules better when bookings are made and paid for in advance, the reduced cost of processing a traveller’s booking & payment, plus the valuable data enabling them to discover travelling needs and introduce new schedules and even new profitable routes.
Murebwa says they are clear about these benefits and explained in detail how confident and excited they are about the value they are bringing to the industry. So much they are providing operators no-strings free trials so they can taste how it improves their business.
We asked Murebwa what the revenue model is, that is a commission from bus operators, processing fee charged for each booking but he wouldn’t go into detail only saying that theirs is a Software as a Service product and that bus operators only pay for the service they need.
Just last month, a Zambia startup providing a similar solution for that market, Dot Com Zambia, got a US $500,000 dollar investment from Zambian and European VCs. It’s easy to see how they see value in a market that is likely to grow significantly as more people in Africa come online and use it to cut out the frustrations of offline drudgery in their lives.
22 comments
Here we go. Let’s see how this works.
Real gold doesn’t need to shout and tell the world that “here I am, I am gold!”
I only smell relevance!!! A solution to a real problem! Well done guys at National Ticket. This startup will succeed (of course on condition that the entrepreneurs are indeed talented!)
Another ZimTicket
mmmm, nope. Not another ZimTicket. Very Very different, both in what they do and, from the looks, level of serious execution 😉
Look at http://www.zimticket.com/?ec=buses to get an idea
They should fix the spelling for Zimbabwe. Also when I tried it the Book button does not work. It shows it’s loading but still does not open a new page. They still need to do a lot of checks. But it is a good site
Guys I think these guys have a different approach lets give them a bit of space and watch.
I just checked out the site and it looks beautiful. Since these folks are Zimbabweans, i dont understand how they fail to spell the name of their own country.
+1
Haa Guys this product is something i have been looking nomore going to Roadport nemawindi…Well Done National Tickets
Well done guys! A good vision to start: You solve a real life problem first, if people like your idea, you then start to make money.
This reminds how most antivirus companies start, they offer a solution for free, like how avast started and now ccleaner, then they start to make monet when its popular.
Well done Guys!! i love the product.. Now i can book my bus ticket to SouthAfrica from Home
Well done National Tickets. Brilliant solution indeed….keep it up!!!
Zimbabwe is not ready for online payment. I integrated my site with Paynow and also obtain a Verified Merchant Account to use both Mastercard/VisaCard with transaction limit exceeding 15k but to date I haven’t received a penny
Maybe your website is the one which is not yet ready for Zimbabwe
Show us a transaction history for only ONE company in Zimbabwe, you think clients are utilizing online payment gateway.
🙂 AND don’t forget to remove the company name and address.
I don’t know why Zimbabwean are dubious to use online payment gateways to make payments when it can saves considerable time.
We process a good number of transactions via Paynow when we do events and even for other things sometimes, like advertising. Zimbos use online payments when it offers the convenience they need for something they want.
Kral I think its a combination of things that are required to make online business tick one of which is aggressive advertising and publicity in the right media. Look on this platform there are ways in which your business can work online. Ask the techZim team how they are making it and you will be shocked your site can still make money for you.
Flimaspay.co.zw 3000 payments in 1 month
I buy my tickets for Citylink every week online through their website. Its very efficient and uses paynow. I receive my Tickets Instantly. I am yet to use this one to see if it will bring convenience that matches the one I am having through Citylink.
Noble idea but eish.. Just tested this and it’s sad to say that these guys didn’t do a good job testing their site and maybe putting up some fine print somewhere (assuming there is). I am saying this because they quote $100 for a ticket on a particular route and then when making payment Paynow charges you USD114.51 ($110 to merchant – instead of the quoted $100, then $4.51 transaction fees)
**disclaimer: I didn’t buy a ticket, ended on the payment screen
Paynow lets the seller decide if they going to absorb the fees or make the customer pay, these guys must have chosen that fees go on top. Don’t know where the extra 10 would come from though if its not fees.
Somehow ended up on this page today. And I must say, they look dodgy these guys! look at http://www.national-tickets.com/gallery, Look at the contact page, their address isnt formatted correctly.
The footer says they are using BITLA software, so they are probably not devs, no problem but are they running this thing professionally? no.