Pathao is a popular Bangladeshi origin ride sharing and delivery service platform that was started back in March, 2015. Currently, it’s headquartered in Dhaka, Bangladesh but offers its services in four major cities of Bangladesh i.e. Dhaka, Chittagong, Khulna and Sylhet. However, Pathao only started providing its services to the Nepalese people form 12th, September, 2018. Since then, the brand has become hugely successful and loved throughout the country. In this article, we will try to dive deep into its roots and try to discern the major factors that made it such a huge hit in the Nepali market.
The Background:
Asheem Man Singh Basnyat, the current regional director of Pathao Nepal with six of his friends first inaugurated the company in the country. Formerly, Basnyat worked with one of the multinational companies that wanted to launch Uber in the country. However, they weren’t successful and Basnyat didn’t worked for another sir or so months. Although, he had a vague idea about the ride sharing app since the economic blockade of 2015/16, he didn’t have the necessary resources to start his own. Later, he heard about a certain Bangladeshi ride sharing app and initiated a conversation with them. Fortunately, Basnyat did convince them to run Pathao in the country but they didn’t want to invest in Pathao Nepal.
With the goal in sight, Basnyat struggled to bring investors in the beginning but successfully brought some form the USA. After that, they also launched their own app within ten months which is relatively quick compared to others. Finally, after many hardships and struggles Pathao Nepal officially started its services in 24th September 2018. Later on, they also started their car and food services in 9th August 2019 and 2nd October 2020 respectively.
Pathao Nepal Core Strengths:
As a ride sharing platform, one of its biggest strengths includes its quick services at an affordable cost. In the past, people in the country had to pay very high taxi fares for a relatively short journey across the capital. However with the introduction of Pathao, people are able to reach their destinations far quicker and at a cheaper rate. Also, it had the first mover advantage with Tootle being its only competitor form the beginning.
Now, the company has vastly increased its services from its original bike services to even cars and food deliveries as well. This aided in the growth of the company with the increasing number of its loyal customer bases. At the same time, it helped alleviate the un-employment situation in the country as well. It provided people a means of extra income with the utilization of their leisure time. As a result, we can see people of varying age groups involved in the business regardless of their educations and backgrounds. In short, it provided people with a platform that is beneficial for all the parties that resulted in the massive popularity of the brand in the Nepali market.
Pathao Struggles and Weaknesses:
To summarize, Pathao also had its fair share of struggles and difficulties to get where it is today. From the beginning, people were skeptical about the idea of ride sharing as it was a fairly new concept back then. Also, it started various feuds in the capital between the Pathao riders and the local taxi drivers on the street. Particularly, the taxi drivers were enraged at the Pathao riders as they were basically undercutting the competition for similar services. This also caused various law suits and legal formalities against such platforms throughout the country.
Tootle was another threat to Pathao in its early business days. They both had similar services and were competing in the same arena. For instance, Tootle had a larger customer base with bigger number of riders as it was older and matured when compared to Pathao. The amount of customers that Pathao got was significantly lower than the completion. Yet, Pathao didn’t lost hope and kept on improving its services making it what it is today.
Pathao Current Situation:
Since its inception, the brand has matured significantly and provides a significantly larger number of services than it initially started with. Also, its application has been downloaded over 500,000 times in the country with many additions daily. Similarly, the number of employees has also increased to around 75,000 and they serve around 1.2 million customers daily.
The riders also benefitted from this numbers as some earn around Rs.35000 monthly through this job only. Similarly, other riders like students, office workers and specially-abled people also gain a source of extra income through this platform. All in all, it’s a valuable brand for the country and its people that attracts investors from around the world.
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