At Mozio we’ve been on the multi-modal bandwagon for years: we have firmly believed that there would be no “winner takes all,” everyone Uber’ing everywhere all the time.
It seems like even Uber agrees with us at this point, with CEO Dara talking about viewing other modes of transportation as essential for Uber’s strategy, and aggregation as a core part of that when they can’t obviously run the product themselves (i.e. public transit).
Our observations of the market make it clear that now is the best time to start thinking about your multimodal strategy:
1) The rise of Scooters and Bikeshare
There are currently 8-10 significantly funded scooter and bikeshare companies, and a host of smaller ones, competing for marketshare. What is interesting is that cities seem to be learning from the wild, wild west days of ridehshare and tightly regulating them. While as a fan of letting more forms of greener transportation thrive I disapprove of this regulation and think it only serves to help higher cost and less environmentally friendly services, there is no denying that this is good for aggregators such as Mozio.
SF kicked out arguably the top two scooter companies in Bird and Lime, and anointed two separate little-known winners, Scoot and Spin.
Whereas smaller scooter companies might have been put out of business, they can cosy up to cities and earn preferential treatment and erect regulatory barriers in each market, making more likely there will be 8-10 scooter companies instead of 3-4.
2) Uber Retreating from Russia, China and Southeast Asia,
However Uber likes to phrase it, they lost the head to head matchup in Russia vs Yandex, South East Asia vs Grab and China vs Didi. They got lucrative ownership stakes in all of those, so I’m not saying it was a bad strategy to compete vigorously in those markets, but their losses made it clear there was not going to be a winner take all even in the rideshare category alone.
3) A Resurgent Gett, Careem, Taxify and Cabify
Resurgent competitors like Taxify, Careem, Gett, Cabify and more are only raising larger and larger rounds and showing a level of longevity that even I would probably not have estimated.
4) Transit Agencies Adopting On-Demand Mobility
There is a trend of transit agencies partnering with companies like MagicBus, Via, Chariot, Ally, & Flittech to run “on-demand” public transit networks, creating yet another form of transportation in-between transit, rideshare, shuttles, etc.
Acquisitions, mergers, big rounds (8M+ minimum) for apps like Migo and Transit App and more has made it abundantly clear to many investors that there won’t be a winner-takes all mobility market, and we look forward to seeing how the market evolves.
