RideDako was one of Bangladesh's early ride-sharing startups, but faced challenges with branding, competition, and resources that led to its shutdown in 2017. It now plans to relaunch focused on women riders and passengers for safety and accessibility. The new strategy addresses problems in RideDako's product focus, pricing, promotion, and team resources through a women-centric mission, 1-year marketing budget, and flyer attracting female motorcycle drivers.

1. The case has been created and provided by
MISTIMED LAUNCH: HOW ONE OF THE FIRST RIDE-SHARING
STARTUP OF BANGLADESH STUMBLED
The global ridesharing industry is less than a decade old but has already managed to
disrupt the transportation industry across the world. More than 15 million rides are
taking place across the world daily and as of 2018, the industry is a total of $61 billion.
Ridesharing services have recently launched in Bangladesh with the rise of local startups
such as Pathao and Shohoz and entry of foreign players such as Uber. Somewhere
between 18,000 - 20,000 rides are completed daily on motorcycles and cars combined.
Numbers are projected to grow increasingly in the days to come. As consumer markets
grow in different parts of the world, so does the competition for every user.
What is ridesharing?
Ridesharing allows individuals in need of transportation access to a pool of drivers
through a digital platform such as a mobile app or website. In a traditional ride-sharing
business model, market players do not invest in any physical infrastructure (such as
setting up factories or service centres) or traditional assets (such as cars or garages).
Reasons for mass adoption of ridesharing services in Bangladesh
 Traffic conditions: With 36% of the country’s urban population living in capital
Dhaka, it has become one of the world’s most densely populated cities.
Congestion in Dhaka eats up 3.2 million working hours per day.
 Convenience: Bus and CNG are the two mass transportation mostly used by city
dwellers. Buses are often crowded during rush hours, slow in reaching
destination and customer service is perceived to be inadequate. CNGs on the
other hand often would not want to go in the customer’s required destination
and would bargain for a fare even though each CNG has a fare meter installed.
 Growing middle class: Bangladesh’s middle income class has become more
tech savvy and digitally literate in recent years and are prone to adapting to
digital solutions. The middle class has now greater access to payment mediums
such as credit/debit cards and Bkash, Rocket etc.
 Fast commuting: Motorcycles are considered the fastest mode of transportation
in Dhaka city. Travelling by motorcycles helps commuters reach destinations on
time.
 Employment creation: An estimated 40,000 drivers/riders under the ride-
sharing network implies the job creation potential of this sector. From a car/bike
owner/driver's perspective, the ridesharing companies has brought about

2. The case has been created and provided by
tangible positive benefits. The gross income of a ride-share car owner is some
BDT 60,000 a month.
 Comfortable, cost friendly and convenient rides: A ride-share motorcycle/car
user spends on an average BDT 250/trip. Users get to enjoy being picked up
from the comfort of their own homes and being dropped off at the requested
location for costs similar to getting on a CNG if not less.
RideDako: One of the early entrants in the market
RideDako is one of the very first startups to enter the ridesharing space back in 2016.
Through RideDako one could request for a motorcycle ride on-demand.
RideDako’s team saw that a lot of people own motorcycles but travel alone on their
designated routes. RideDako’s plan was to fill the backseat of the motorcycle with a
passenger who is planning to go on the same route as the motorcycle owner. In this
way RideDako was trying to solve 2 kinds of problems:
 Reduce traffic in Dhaka city by allowing 2 people to travel together in the same
direction to go together.
 Create an income source for motorcycle owners.
RideDako: Features
RideDako’s only intended platform for ridesharing was motorcycles and provided the
following features:
 Requesting a ride from mobile app
 Matching riders who are willing to go in the same route as the user.
 Users can pay through cash or RideDako mobile wallet.
Considering 2016, these were modest yet the most essential offerings of the product.

3. The case has been created and provided by
RideDako: Operations
RideDako was operating only in Dhaka and was serving the users and riders of Dhaka
city. The overall team was small, and the app was built up from scratch in-house. From
2016 to 2017, the number of rides provided by RideDako were as follows (to the nearest
thousand):
2016 2017
April May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar April May
2,000 4,000 5,000 7,000 7,000 8,000 8,000 11,000 13,000 13,000 15,000 12,000 14,000 16,000
The increase in numbers or rides per month has mostly happened through the
following:
 Social media promotion
 Word of mouth marketing
 Field level activation through use of sales force.
RideDako: Fees
RideDako charged BDT 10 per km of distance travelled with 25p for each minute of
travel. RideDako kept only 10% of the total fee per trip as commission. The commission
rate was the lowest compared to all the other competitors’ rates and thus helped to
bring a lot of riders into the system.
RideDako launches grandly
Although RideDako had launched their operation back in April 2016, RideDako officially
did a press release and a grand party in November 2016 which included a lot of
stakeholders from various corporations and government entities.
RideDako’s CEO felt that he and his venture has been on various radars of Government
entities ever since the launch party. The CEO said “We have been requested repeatedly
by various government bodies to come to their office with proper documents ensuring the
legality of the business”.
RideDako’s CEO saw this as a challenge because until 2017 there was no bill passed to
propose a ride-sharing guideline under which all the ridesharing services can operate.
While other services like Pathao and Uber are operating low-key by not highlighting too
much, RideDako’s CEO felt that “I have exposed myself too much before the market was
ready. My difficulties do not seem to be ending”.

4. The case has been created and provided by
RideDako: Branding
RideDako was facing an internal challenge regarding how to position itself in the
market. RideDako, in people’s minds, was just another ridesharing app with no
distinguishing features. Ratings on the play store was 3.6/5 with number of downloads
being 50,000. This was considered to be below average rating. Some of customers’
comments on the play store was:
 “Map kaaj kore na. Poor quality service”
 “Bhara dekhalo ekta shurute. Namar pore bhara onno. Called your customer care
but did not resolve. Not using your service.”
 “Driver’s behavior is poor. Asked for more money than the app charge”
The CEO while checking the inbox of the RideDako Facebook page saw a very alarming
message:
“Your rider Mr. ******** tried to sexually molest me while I was riding on his bike. I
complained on your hotline but I have not heard back. I am going to post the entire thing
on Facebook and media.”
The CEO got startled at this message and tried to communicate with the user. But by
the time he could connect to the user over the phone, the whole incident got blown up
over Facebook with many comments and the post was picked up by the media. This was
a severe blow to the “safe to travel” brand that RideDako was trying to establish.
Added to this is the fact that RideDako was not able to achieve the required amount of
traction that it was wanting. By January 2017, RideDako was 20,000 rides a month.
RideDako was failing to increase the number of rides to this level; and they did not have
a concrete reason for the failure.

5. The case has been created and provided by
Competitors make their move
Competitors such as Uber and Pathao had been spending a lot of money on acquiring
riders for their service. One of the tactics they have used is ride completion bonus which
makes providing rides quite attractive because ride completion bonuses compensate
for the commission that riders are supposed to pay. This results in many riders not
having to pay any overall commission to Uber/Pathao or the riders get more in bonuses
than the commission to pay to Uber/Pathao, making Uber/Pathao the preferred app to
provide rides in. RideDako estimated that as they had not raised any additional funds,
making such a move would make them burn cash at such a rate that they would have to
close down business by the end of 2017.
As the number of riders have not increased overall, RideDako was losing riders to its
competitors for not being able to pay well.
RideDako: Challenges for the company
The CEO was also realizing that although he had a small team to manage in terms of
organization, he was juggling multiple responsibilities simultaneously. He had a trusty
Chief Technical Officer (CTO) but the CTO was relegated to just app development and
the CTO did not have a team of his own to work on the app. Thus the CTO was also
exhausted with developing the app and could not help the CEO in any other matters.
The CEO on the other hand was struggling to manage the Government and legal
requirements, business development and office administration. This was affecting the
overall mission of the organization. At one point both the CEO and CTO felt that they
had become clueless and did not know where to proceed.
During March 2017 the entire team sat together to discuss the way forward and how
long they will survive with the cash that they have. After thorough problem analysis,
they realized that they had until June 2017 to survive if they followed their normal
operations without any influx of money. The CEO and CTO thus took a crucial decision
to stop operation altogether and give everyone their salaries 1 month in advance and
let the team go. The app was taken down from both iOS and Android store. RideDako
was no more to be seen.

6. The case has been created and provided by
RideDako planning to re-emerge
Although the team disbanded in middle of 2017, the CEO and CTO still wanted to revive
RideDako. This time they wanted to rehaul the service that they are offering and target
a more niche segment. RideDako wanted to ensure that women feel safe in availing
ride-sharing services. Based on their research, this was the finding:
RideDako now attempts to solve this puzzle piece. They want to serve female users of
ridesharing services by supplying riders who are women themselves. This requires
building a business model which caters to getting more women to ride their own
motorcycles and also getting them to carry passengers who are women themselves.
They have raised around $2 million in “Series A” capital by pitching this idea and want
to put it to good use to launch the renewed RideDako covering all the mistakes from
before.

7. The case has been created and provided by
1. Requirements
Construct a re-emergence plan for RideDako, which needs to cover:
1.1. Overview of what RideDako used to do?
1.2. Problems faced by RideDako in terms of overall branding.
1.3. Critical analysis of the problem through the lens of:
 Product
 Price
 Place
 Promotion
 People
 Processes
 Physical evidence
1.4. Marketing strategy for RideDako’s re-launch.
2. Specific Additional Mandatory Requirements
2.1. A new mission and vision statement of RideDako.
2.2. Tentative marketing budget for 1 year.
2.3. A one-page flyer to attract lady riders (Ladies who will drive other ladies to their
destination) describing the offering that RideDako would provide to these riders.

8. The case has been created and provided by
Judgment Criteria
Evaluation Criteria Score
UNDERSTANDING OF THE PROBLEM
Analysis of The Company’s Profile and Core Issue 15
PROPOSED MARKETING PLAN
Understanding of The Target Market 15
Communicating Value to The Customers 15
Strategic Recommendations 15
EFFECTIVENESS OF THE PRESENTATION
Overall visualization quality of the submission 15
DELIVERY OF SPECIFIC REQUIREMENTS
Innovativeness and Rationality of the delivered items 15
 ;) 10
TOTAL SCORE 100