Vodacom wants to help put up to 55,000 new cars onto Uber and Bolt within the next year, which is an odd thing for South Africa's biggest mobile network to be doing. It isn't buying or operating the cars. On Wednesday it launched a programme with fleet manager SmartOps Fleet that brings together the cars, the financing, the technology and the payments needed to get thousands more vehicles onto the road.
Who does what
Investors finance the cars, and SmartOps takes them and puts them to work on platforms like Uber and Bolt. The money the cars make covers the vehicle repayments and pays the investors a commission. SmartOps handles the drivers, insurance and maintenance, with partners such as Motus, Renault and Dongfeng in the wider network, while Vodacom provides some of the technology and payment infrastructure behind it. "What makes this model different is the ecosystem behind it," says SmartOps chief executive Mahene Benzane.
Individuals can sign up if they earn at least R15,300 a month, employed or self-employed, and institutions can too. Each car is financed through Nedbank MFC, stays the investor's own, and is leased to SmartOps, which pays an amount equal to the monthly instalment plus a commission worth 40% of it. On a R10,000 instalment, that is another R4,000, paid into a VodaPay account. The lease runs as long as the finance does, so a 60-month loan means 60 months with SmartOps.
So rather than owning 55,000 cars itself, Vodacom is helping build the system that could put them on the road. Vodacom chief executive Sitho Mdlalose said South Africa's mobility economy "presents an opportunity to connect more people to economic participation through technology-enabled partnerships".
Aiming high
Vodacom wants two out of every three cars in the programme to be electric, and with two drivers per car, it says 55,000 vehicles could support up to 110,000 driver opportunities. For some perspective, BusinessDay estimates South Africa's entire e-hailing industry has roughly 100,000 drivers and more than 2 million passengers today, with Uber the biggest player, followed by Bolt and inDrive.
Vodacom might not be becoming an e-hailing company, but it clearly sees a chance to become a much bigger part of the industry around it, and it wants the cars on the road within nine to 12 months.
