On a trip home for his sister’s wedding, Co-founder Arinze was faced with the dilemma of choosing a random driver at the airport to take him further to his destination in the absence of the arranged pick-up person who could not make it to the airport on time that day. With the heightened security situation in the country, trusting an unknown driver with his itinerary was a huge gamble but at that point had a decision to make and he had no other option but to trust his instinct with his choice. The driver he finally settled with turned out to be a chatty and witty character who ended up giving him a ‘TedEx talk’ on the taxi hailing app business in Nigeria. He especially lamented the fact that they share a high percentage of their earnings with an app company that does little to protect their overall wellbeing other than providing them the customer base.
The Folo app was incorporated in 2021 at the peak of the pandemic taking advantage of the free time spent indoors observing the restrictions. It was a product of extensive market research and consultations with various stakeholders in the industry.
The initial funding for the early app development was self-financing and basic bootstrapping through family and friends. This remained largely the situation until we were able to produce the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) which enabled us the pitch the folo app to an angel investor, Mr. Achikeh. He was also a mutual friend who had interest in digital development financing and agreed to provide our first investment funds. His timely cash intervention was instrumental to launching the application to the market.
At the core of our value proposition is financial liberation for the drivers, the safety of all folo users, choice and fair pricing system for both the driver and passenger.
On the folo app, the drivers only sign up to our monthly subscription model for a token of the amount they are exploited on with the established taxi hailing apps. With no statutory deductions from their earnings, folo drivers keep 100% of their income.
We have in place a robust verification protocol that identifies both the passenger and driver. Our users could make informed choices based on verification status among other criteria and to rate one another after each journey completion. The rating system is an integral part of our service delivery quality control and safeguard.
Prices offered to our customers are readily affordable because of competition, availability of choices and the recommended guide price defaults. Its unique design gives folo users the option to switch between being a passenger and a driver, have multiple driver options at competitive rates resulting in lower available prices. Folo platform also offers users multiple ride solutions and other associated services all on the same application. Our most important mission was to develop a taxi hailing platform where the driver controls their earning, and all users (passenger and drivers alike) are safe using our services. This remains the same till this day.