Here’s a blog post on Uber’s exit from T&T from our friend, Kelvin Scoon, a marketing battleaxe with over 50 years experience on the client and agency sides:
DON’T CRY FOR UBER T&T
They know they brought nothing to the party.
I had originally decided not to respond to Mark Lyndersay’s Bit Depth requiem for a departed UberTT, but the sentiments expressed kept bubbling up in my head over a few days. So, I finally decided to add my contrarian views to the funeral oration from the viewpoint of an old old-style marketing man.
Let’s examine some of the arguments that Mark used to justify his conclusions. “For UberTT, a door has closed – though from their customers’ perspective, it was slammed shut in their faces – but another portal has opened.”
Nobody slammed any door in Uber TT’s face. UberTT ‘buss’. Businesses fail all the time, so there is nothing unique in UberTT’s failure. This foreign company was allowed to start operating in open violation and disrespect of our nation’s laws. While our PH drivers must regularly dodge police and pay expensive tickets to keep operating. But it was UberTT’s ‘big country arrogance’. that made them not thoroughly investigate the real nuances of the demographics and the unique market systems of T&T’s home-grown transport systems, that we have evolved over the years. It is nowhere near perfect, but it works and handles thousands of commuters every day. How to improve it is the subject of another long discussion that T&T needs to have. We should take note however that T&T is not the only country where Uber has had and continues to have problems with its predatory practices in the open market place.
Uber TT complained to it’s very few customers “After operating for more than a year in Trinidad and Tobago and having made multiple efforts to create a significant change in the country in regards to mobility and opportunities for entrepreneurship, Uber has unfortunately decided to pause its operation in the country.”
“This decision was not made lightly, but at this time, we believe that there is a lack of a proper environment for innovation and technology to thrive in Trinidad and Tobago.”
T&T’s Transport History
For the education of Uber and their few Uberites, the Trinidad and Tobago transport system has been constantly disrupting and reinvesting itself for the last sixty or so years since the end of World War II. It started with the introduction of the three-seater Ford Prefect (and other similar post-war English models) as route taxis at 12cts a drop on short routes. They invaded the territory of the private bus services, took regular affordable transport into areas not served by the then existing taxi and bus services, turned the bicycle into a recreational vehicle and unfortunately reduced our healthy walking habits. Out of this disruption has emerged a small army of transport entrepreneurs, who are single vehicle and small fleet owners, individual owner-drivers and contract drivers, supported by a network of sales and repair services. And we should not forget the many part time owner drivers who supplement family incomes by ’pulling bull’ with their private family vehicles after work. This has grown into a thriving complementary small entrepreneur enterprise that has defied the authorities and the law to set up, operate and provide a much-needed affordable service
Most notable in this informal unregulated system is our previously mentioned ubiquitous PH services that complement regular taxis on routes that have been agreed between operators and passengers and at competitive self-regulated fares. Uber did not bring entrepreneurship to the Trinidad and Tobago transport market. We invented it. This trend started years before. In the process it put the then existing “ride hailer’ taxi companies and Taxi Stands out of business. Yes, the small customer base that could have afforded to, did ‘hail’ their taxi rides with a land line phone call. You see Uber did not introduce ‘ride hailing’ to T&T either. Older heads will remember Battoo’s Taxi and Bacchus and Ice House and Independence taxi stands. ‘Ride Hailer’ and Disrupters may be new marketing jargon, but they are in truth old free market systems.
Local Innovation
Uber’s claim that they brought to T&T a “product, as everyone should know by now, is an app and supporting billing system that makes it possible for anyone with a private car to become a taxi service.” is therefore false and without any merit.”
There was already at least one local company Drop, operating a computer ride hailer app in Trinidad before all the ballyhoo about UberTT; and thousands of private car owner entrepreneurs.
UberTT also obviously did not bring any substantial capital investment in infrastructure or rolling stock. It is our small contract commission drivers who took loans to buy the rolling stock and now must make the payments.
Now that we have established that UberTT did not bring any substantive disruptive innovations to local transport, other than their version of a universally available computer application. If you are in doubt google it.
We need to ask and answer the most important question. What did UberTT expect to take away. In the true spirit of transnational capitalism, the company expected to repatriate substantial net profits from minimal financial risks, but in US Dollars. In other words, UberTT was a potential drain on our already scarce foreign exchange. For that alone we should rejoice.
The Way Forward
Now that UBER has gone we could do two important things. Firstly, existing local entrepreneurs like Drop Taxi service, the group of former Uber drivers mentioned in Mark’s requiem and other local entrepreneurs have an opportunity to expand and grow their services to meet the requirements of our travelling publics but without the distraction of Uber’s superior public relations machine
The second important change is that government now has an opportunity to decriminalize the PH system and encourage the entrepreneurship that has flourished through it. There is no good reason for any government to deny any individual the right to earn income from his privately-owned property via unnecessary restrictions, regulations and laws. By accepting and using PH vehicles, the travelling public has spoken loudly. It is now for Government to follow the lead that has been set by our own enterprising small business pioneers and tweak the law. This should not prove to be too difficult if the lawmakers and the insurance industry put their heads together.
We should learn from this experience to be more careful and circumspect in assessing foreign interventions. Being new and popular in the news and hyped by international media should not prevent us from more careful assessments. The old saying remains true. ‘All that glitters is not gold’.
The plain marketing truth is, that the growth of the PH industry is a creature of past governments’ interference in the operations of a growing market driven transport system. But that is another story to be told. It is now the responsibility of current governments to disengage from the free market.
