Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1153076
08.08.19 10 INTERVIEW Car sharing and how it's gaining Business Today met GoTo Malta CEO Liran Golan to discuss the challenges of launching a car sharing service in Malta, the benfits such a service offers end-users and how the company is now branching out with new B2B offers MASSIMO COSTA What does the GoTo service you offer consist of? We operate a fully electric one-way car sharing service, which we launched in November 2018. is allows our custom- ers to book one of our cars to use it to go from say Valletta to Sliema and park it there for someone else to use. Right now, we have 150 Renault Zoe electric vehicles and we plan to increase the fleet by the end of August to keep up with the demand and provide users with increased availability. In June, we launched a new, complemen- tary round trip service, which allows cus- tomers to book a car in advance and use it for a longer period of time, for few hours or even days, and then return the car to the same spot they took it from. is is in- tended to address different transportation needs and cater for those who normally use the bus but want to use a car over the weekend, or for tourists who visit Malta. Since the car for this service will be used over several hours or days, making it diffi- cult to use a charging station, we opted to use hybrid Toyota Yaris to still maintain a green balance. Both services are working well in tan- dem: the one-way service is geared to- wards providing a shared mobility solu- tion for daily commuting patterns such as travelling from home to office, or gro- cery shopping; while the new round trip service targets different transportation needs. But together they provide individ- uals or businesses with the alternative of using shared mobility to conduct any ac- tivity they require. Both the one-way and round-trip ser- vices can be booked using the same GoTo app. We wanted to ensure customers benefitted from the holistic experience of having a single application. GoTo is one of the pioneers in launching an application where a client can opt for a one-way or round trip service in the same app. In this regard, while we did have some teething issues when it came to integrat- ing the new round trip service into the existing one-way function of the app, we have been working on these and are con- fident they will shortly be fully addressed. How does one go about using the service? Anyone interested in our service can go to the GoTo website at GoTo.com.mt, where all the required information about our pricing schemes and how the service works can be found. After that, prospective users can register via the website or through a link within the mobile app, which is available for iP- hone and Android phones. e registra- tion process will involve the verification of the person's driving licence, which takes under 24 hours. If an individual wants to use GoTo immediately, they can also con- tact our 24/7 call centre and we will verify their licence within 10 minutes. We will very soon move to a more automated ver- ification process which will shorten the validation period. Once a client's account is validated, they will receive an email informing them that they can use the app to login into their ac- count, find the nearest available car, and book it to reach to their destination. Once they are driving the car, they can make use of our "Navigate To" feature, and the car will direct the driver to the nearest free parking spot within the area allocated for GoTo vehicles. Your service was launched less than a year ago and is the first of its kind in Malta. How has the take-up been? Our service is an initiative run in collab- oration with Transport Malta, following an international public call to introduce an electric car sharing service. From the time we started operating last November till now we have registered around 8,000 users, which far surpassed our expecta- tions. We are confident that we are able to serve everyone who wants to use the service. I should note that there is a difference between registered and active users. Ac- tive users are those who have used the service at least once in the last month, and we have around 5,700 of these. We have around 650 reservations each day, and the service is available in almost every location in Malta and Gozo, with just a couple of exceptions, such as Mdi- na. e parking bays reserved for our ve- hicles were provided by Transport Malta in collaboration with the local councils around the island. We have 450 such bays at the moment – a ratio of three bays per one car, which is designed to allow people to go from one place to another without finding all parking bays already occupied by other GoTo cars. Why should someone choose to use GoTo instead of calling a taxi or hiring a car? e price depends on the distance trav- elled during a trip, because taxis use a different pricing mechanism than ours, but the pricing of GoTo is between 40% to 70% cheaper than other solutions. In terms of car hire, the choice between this and GoTo depends on the person's needs. However, our new round trip ser- vice offers an alternative to hiring a car, which allows customers to book cars up to three months in advance, and the car can be booked just across from your house or office. Our round trip service also does away with the need to visit a car rental company's office – everything is done through the app, including the damage report before the customer starts using the car. How would you respond to any complaints that the GoTo service is too expensive to realistically use frequently? Do you feel your various pricing plans counter this criticism, and cater for all types of customers? When we first launched our service in November last year, there was one stand- ard plan for the one-way service, which included a €7 monthly membership fee and €0.28 per minute. In April this year, we launched a new basic plan where we did away with the membership fee and es- tablished the price at €0.35 per minute. If you do the math based on an average trip of 20 to 25 minutes, it would benefit users to move from a basic to standard plan if they do five trips in a month. We also have tourist plans and saving plans for our heavy users. Furthermore, I can now reveal that we will be launching a new pricing scheme, geared for businesses, by the end of Au- gust. What will the new business pricing plan involve? e business scheme was drawn up following meetings with local business- es where we tried to better understand their transportation needs and what mechanisms they have in place for their employees. We understood that there are two types of bundles we can provide for businesses. e first is a bundle geared for employees to use GoTo as a mobility solution to attend work meetings and en- gagements instead of compensating them for using a taxi or their own car. Here we plan to offer three types of bundles based on the business' potential needs, whereby a business can buy a bundle of minutes for its employees, ranging in price from €0.19 to €0.22 per minutes of travel time. e second bundle is for employees who want to use the service to commute from home to work and back – here GoTo pro- vides an employee benefit. In this case, a business can buy bundles for all their employees. For instance, a business with 50 employees can register all 50 of them, and allocate a certain number of minutes for each individual. e price rate here is €0.18, which is very cheap compared to what businesses currently spend on this type of transportation. As I see it, there are three main bene- fits for businesses to use GoTo for their transportation needs: minimise their impact on the environment, save money; and finally since GoTo also offers a strong