Hwindi which was popularly known as one of the 2 ride-hailing service providers alongside Vaya is expanding to offer a lot more to their users.
Before the most recent update, Hwindi was offering users the ability to (i) order a taxi online and (ii) deliver parcels using Hwindi’s driver network. Building on this Hwindi will now offer a lot more services including the following;
- Taxis
- Trucks for moving
- Hwindi Eats
- Hwindi Send (parcels)
- Hwindi Shops
- Hwindi Power
- Runner
- Water delivery
- Beauty services
- and more…
At the time of writing, the new Hwindi app has 30 services on offer but the biggest challenge they’ll have is onboarding service providers. Hwindi will have to find a way to make it attractive for service providers for all the different services to pick them but there is another problem they’ll have to solve.
Users vs service providers – who comes first?
For service providers to add their services to Hwindi they need to have assurances that users will be coming to the app often enough to discover their service. Users also need an incentive to come to the app and an app without service providers isn’t the incentive.
The saving grace I see for Hwindi here, is the fact that they already have over 10k downloads on the Google Play Store and the people who use the app for ride-hailing will now also interface with these service providers.
Is that enough to actually make Hwindi as a super app viable? I’m not entirely sure, but it gets them off to a better start than Sasai – who become Hwindi’s direct competition in the local Super app space.
One of my colleagues who I was discussing the move with feels Hwindi might have been better served adding one niche initially, “maybe food delivery first”. Then building on that as time goes on. Regardless, Hwindi’s bold move will serve well a case study later on – hopefully the case study will reflect on how they successfully built a super app in an African market – a rainbow unicorn thus far.
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5 comments
Can we say they are copying Econet? Just asking since they once claimed Econet was copying them.
The apps are very different.
Taxi and a Taxi rental?
Taxi is the normal taxi services then taxi rental is renting a taxi for a certain period. Here you can book the taxi for an hour, 2hrs, 4hrs, etc and its yours for that time. Lets say you want to go visit a doctor you can book the taxi for 2 hrs, so which means while you inside the taxi is waiting for you to take you back and the charge will be controlled and slightly cheaper.
This is a case of throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what will stick!
Big ups Hwindi!!