Shared Mobility for Organizations

LULA is addressing the issue of high congestion in African cities, lack of sufficient, safe & reliable public transit for employees (especially those working after hours), the high cost of commuting and the growing CO2 emissions that result in our growing cities due to this conundrum.

The problem exists in over 100 cities in Africa that are growing rapidly, but don't have the infrastructure to harness this growth. These challenges hinder economic growth and reduce the quality of life affecting the youngest population on earth - the African continent - resulting in low quality of life, high pollution, gridlocked traffic, low productivity and high costs.

LULA believes that without access to transport, you cant access economic opportunities - without which you cant solve poverty, unemployment and inequaltiy.

LULA is a transport platform that connects companies and their employees to a network of private shuttles for sustainable and convenient rides to work and beyond - saving money, freeing up time and reducing your carbon footprint.

We partner with independent shuttle companies/drivers who get matched to regular bookings from businesses across South Africa. Our platform groups employees into clusters and build dynamic/virtual routes that pickup employees at their door and takes them to work 24/7.

We leverage our unique clustering algorithm alongside our dispatching API and partner with employees to create a win-win-win situation: the company wins, the employees win, the drivers win and the environment wins.

 HR/Facilities Managers in the business upload their employees to the LULA platform and automatically builds out the routes and clusters for the business. Employees then make use of the LULA mobile and web apps to book regular rides as and when they need them. Once trips start, employees get to share a ride their colleagues on route to work whilst being driven by a verified LULA driver. 

 For drivers, LULA matches them with regular bookings within their communities to enable a recurring and convenient income for employees on the platform - creating much needed income as drivers play their part in reducing the carbon footprint in our cities and the number of cars on the road. LULA's work can be seen in this video over here.

LULA is addressing the 100 cities with over 1 million people by 2025 in Africa that are growing rapidly but don't have sufficient infrastructure to support this growth. We're actively mindful that these cities are heating up 1.5x faster than anywhere else in the world but need a faster, efficient and sustainable way to address these challenges.

From a user perspective, we're targetting employees at businesses who rely on public transport to get to work, lift clubs or ridehailing services outside of the catchment area of public transit. Furthermore, users who work after 6PM fall into our target by virtue of the lack of public transit during these times.

From a driver perspective, we're focusing on small shuttle operators/independent drivers who have 6-22 seater vans and are looking for a consistent flow of income within their communities to de-risk their capital investment of their vehicle

1. Lived Experience: Velani and Xabiso, our founders, have grown up in Johannesburg and Cape Town - South Africa's most congested cities - having to deal with the challenge of transportation from a young age, whether it was during their school years, college years or formal working years. They have also had to deal with the consequences of the cost of transport and the reality of missing your ride home, amongst other things. Having spent the last 8 years working on LULA, we've seen first hand how impactful the challenge of transport in African cities hinges the grow and wellbeing of our cities - both as local residents and avid travellers across Africa.

2. Resilience: Our commitment to solving this problem is visible in what we've accomplished despite two years of COVID-19 and one year of a global recession. We've iterated on our assumptions and grown the business from an idea to an established business - continuously falling in love with the problem and not the solution

3. Entrepreneurship: Our team has a unique entrepreneurial aspect to life and perpetually fall in love with solving problems and solving people whilst pursuing impact in conjunction with profitability. We've been entrepreneurs for over 13 years and have built two ventures prior to starting LULA

LULA has served over 300 companies, moved over 15,000 regular riders, onboarded 1000 driver partners and processed over 500,000 bookings in 5 cities across South Africa. We have also raised three rounds of financing (Pre-Seed, Seed and Pre-Series A). Furthermore, LULA has nailed Product-Market Fit, solidified its unit economics and has a very clear path to profitability.

1. Technical: We're looking for some technical expertise to help us go deeper on our software stack using tools like AI, Machine Learning and Data Science. Furthermore, if we could get software licenses or discounts from partners like Google Maps/Google Cloud it would help reduce the overall cost of running our business as we grow impact

2. Market: We are mindful that there are other cities outside of South Africa that could benefit from our offering. Partnering with stakeholders to do a small Pilot project would be useful for our consideration prior to commencing expansion

3. Financial: Whilst we're not actively fundraising, recieving grants and meeting with DFIs/Impact investors is always beneficial for our long run journey and we'd be looking at exploring grants to rollout in certain communities on our roadmap.

4. Partners: There are a number of businesses and institutions that have a vested interest in reducing their carbon footprint and improving the way people move - for this reason we'd love to explore partnerships with stakeholders in the SOLVE/MIT network that could be strategic to our short term and long term goals

LULA's innovation is innovative in a number of ways, broken down below:

1. Business Model: Our model is B2B/B2B2C whereby we charge the company the full price of the trip, and they have the option to deduct it off employee salaries or offer it as a full benefit. This approach essentially frees up more income for employees who would've paid for transport on their own. Moreover, the element of partnering with an employer enables us to build a community of people who can trust each other during their daily commute.

2. Asset Light: We leverage existing private shuttles rather than buying or leasing vans for exclusive use. This incentivises drivers to perform regularly to earn more income rather than fixed income.

3. Route Design: LULA's routes are demand responsive and function based on user addresses as opposed to fixed lines running recurring schedules at the risk of being empty. Our routes are optimized for travel time, colleagues and cost

4. Pricing: LULA charges per trip booked, rather than per passenger onboard. This allows for companies and employees to achieve real economies of scale and incentivises higher adoption.

LULA's impact on the problem exists in the following ways:

1. Infrastructure: By virtue of the fact that public transit usually isn't available after 6PM, the provision of LULA's offering on a demand responsive basis means that we literally create "infrastructure" for commuters where it is non-existent

2. CO2 Reduction: By sharing rides with colleagues, we reduce the amount of CO2 emitted per person and per business

3. Increase in income: Granted that companies are paying for the service (in most cases) for employees, this means employees now have more disposable income availble to them.

4. Less congestion: Fewer cars on the road by virtue of using a shared ride to work with your colleagues who live in similar areas

5. More Productivity & wellness: Employees don't have to work about their safety whilst commuting or driving themselves in traffic - this creates an improvement in wellness and productivity.

LULA's impact indicators vary given the broad scope that transportation has, however, we're focusing on the following metrics:

1. CO2 avoided: we're actively measuring how many passengers in a vehicle could've driven themselves, used public transit or a ridehailing service. Based on the above, we're able to get a sense of how much CO2 per km was avoided by using the LULA vans relative to the alternative choices available to users.

2. Income saved: Whilst it is hard for us to gauge the exact amount of money saved, we look at the contribution of companies to the service for their employees which then serves as a function of income saved by users relative to spending on transportation on their own. In South Africa, people spend up to 40% of income on transportation - especially low income earners - and thus this metric is impactful as it allows more economic freedom 

 3. Travel time saved: We try to keep most of our routes to a maximum of 45 minutes travelling time. This is a signifcant saving compared to public transit, however, a slight increase in terms of the passenger driving themself. Moreover, if the user previously drove to work, we could measure the time claimed back by using LULA rather than sitting in traffic on their own unable to be productive or rest. 

 4. Jobs sustained: Annually, we would like to conduct a survey on our users and get a sense of how transportation has impacted their ability to stay at their current job. This metric is important as it directly speaks to economic opportunities being unlocked and sustained.

LULA currently makes use of a number of technologies, however, the core underlying technology is as follows:

1. Software App: Using cross-platform applications (iOS, Android & Web) as a first point of call to engage our users, drivers and organisations. 

 2. SMS: For users who don't have access to mobile data/internet, LULA uses SMS technology as a fallback method to enable communications to our customers and drivers. 

 3. Clustering: Our in house built software that takes addresses, groups them into clusters and designs smart routes is part of our main technology that drives efficiency 

 4. Auctioning & Dispatching: LULA auctions and dispatches bookings as and when available by a set cut off time to our driver network in real-time. This drives efficiency and is part of our core technology 

 5. Google Maps/Mapbox: Lastly, our use of mapping technology is central to building the virtual routes on our platform 

25 Full time employees, plus 5 contractors.
We also have a network of about 1000 drivers on our platform.

I first started working on the original concept from 2014 to 2018 and it never worked out (B2G model integrating public transit).

 LULA 2.0, essentially began in September 2018, thus we can say we've been working on the current offering for about 6 years.

From the beginning, our mission has been to create economic opportunity for all. As such, from our management to our interns and the network of drivers on our platform, we seek to have as much diversity and inclusion as possible:

Management: compromises of African, Indian and White people, male and female, "Youth" (under 35) and above.

  Staff: Our team also consists of 42% women, 70% Youth (under 35), 80% BIPOC, as well as diversity of religious beliefs from Christians to Muslims, Agnostics to Atheists, all adding value to our daily engagements. Our team also is diverse in terms of academic qualifications, some of our staff have Masters degrees, some have no tertiary education. 

  Driver network: we do our utmost best to source our drivers from various communities and provide them with work as close to their communities as possible, from urban areas to informal dwellings, our strategy seeks to empower our driver network from the community on the ground up

LULA operates a two-sided marketplace that uses a B2B business model. 

 We partner with shuttle operators/Vehicle owners who provide their service to our network of clients. For every ride generated, LULA takes a 25% commission. For our customers, the organisation usually signs a fixed term contract for recurring rides for their employees (guaranteed MRR) or they create a LULA account and make ad hoc bookings when required. 

 When companies add their workforces to LULA, we group individuals into clusters and create "Virtual routes" which add cost efficiencies to individuals and the company, which in turn provides recurring income to drivers who fulfil these rides.  

 For customers who opt to use our SaaS offering, LULA charges a booking fee of about $1.5 per ride booked and serves as a type of annuity income on top of our existing work.

Essentially, LULA has a Rides business (Staff Transport, Charter Services and Chauffeur services) where we make a commission and a SaaS business (platform for existing transport providers)where we charge a booking fee.

LULA has raised about $5,000,000 over the last 6 years across three rounds (Pre-Seed, Seed and Pre-Series A). We've also recieved grants and accelerator funding. Despite the pandemic of 2020, LULA has sustained triple digit growth over the last 6 years. 

Moreover, LULA is almost profitable. We have increased revenue and reduced our burn rate meaningfully from burning $110k per month to $24k at the time of submission (and likely to be profitable by July 2024). We have reduce the rate of growth in order to prioritise profitability whilst still making an impact.

LULA initially started off providing employee transportation in a B2B2C model, and has ultimately moved away and focused on B2B model where the organisation pays 100% for the trips. In addition to this, we've added a Charter Service and Chauffeur service to our product offering which are low volume-high margin services to compliment our core offering of employee transportation. Furthermore, we added a SaaS version of our platform to the existing revenue mix. All of the above have contributed to getting us very close to profitability whilst mitigating against concentration risk.