GoOpti – Profitable, Smart and Professional DRT over Long Distances

Project Information

GoOpti

Grant agreement ID: 726547

DOI

10.3030/726547

Project closed

EC signature date 15 June 2016

Start date 1 July 2016

End date 30 June 2018

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Smart, Green And Integrated Transport

Total cost

€ 2 208 430,00

EU contribution

€ 1 545 901,00

Coordinated by

GOOPTI INTELIGENTNE TRANSPORTNE RESITVE DOO
Slovenia

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - GoOpti (GoOpti – Profitable, Smart and Professional DRT over Long Distances)

Reporting period: 2017-07-01 to 2018-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The huge expansion of air travel induced by deregulation of the EU commercial air market has brought important benefits, but only to some Europeans. Citizens from over 500 peripheral areas do not have easy access to major airports as it is extremely hard to build viable transportation businesses on these long-distance routes. GoOpti acted upon this opportunity, bootstrapped the first profitable demand responsive transportation (DRT) over long distances and disrupted the market with two innovations: dynamic pricing (aggregating demand) and guaranteeing rides to professional drivers (aggregating supply); thereby providing a reliable, comfortable and affordable transfer tailored to the needs of passengers. Therefore, Goopti was born as a solution to the challenge how to provide passengers with an affordable, convenient and direct transfer at the desired time from home to the airport. Based on this market opportunity we developed a business model that has been successfully validated in Slovenia, Italy and Spain. By guaranteeing every ride and providing dynamic pricing GoOpti achieved market liquidity (effectively connecting supply and demand). GoOpti’s business model has an enormous market potential, proven by more than 1,200,000 passengers transported by June 2018, with an exceptional growth of revenue, and with a large interest of professional transport companies to join the platform.

The unique advantage of GoOpti's technology is in fact its ability to provide a transportation solution that is profitable when other transport options fail. For example; rural areas with a lower fluctuation of passengers are prone to be excluded from the routes with public transport or large transportation systems. GoOpti’s new transportation business model brings a favourable solution to tackle the transportation issues in those areas by introducing the optimization algorithms, that pool people in vehicles based on their departure time flexibility and routing preferences, which allows to execute the transportation in a profitable way also on less frequently travelled routes, at a lower cost than the cost of public transport, but with the same comfort and flexibility of a personal car.

The overall objective of project is to build a fast growing, profitable, smart and scalable data-driven DRT system by achieving two specific objectives:
1) Scaling-up the existing DRT model into a regional multi-local marketplace;
2) Validating the business model by demonstrating it on a remote region thus proving our potential to grow in a time and cost-efficient manner.

The expected outcomes of the project are:
• Developed and validated regional DRT as a basis for scalable expansion;
• Scalable IT system with data-driven and smart transport solutions for building a profitable multi-local marketplace;
• Established new regional hubs based on project goals and growth strategy;
• Validated process model and growth strategy for systematically launching in new regions that will give rise to high growth.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Business Development
1. Selection of hubs for piloting (Italy as adjacent market and Spain as remote market) based on the exhaustive market research
2. Verification of results of the selection process on site that required carrying out interviews with local stakeholders and contracting experts for running operations
3. Establishment of regional and central hubs, which included launching pilot hubs in Italy and Spain

IT Development
1. Local market integrations of specific regional services and languages into the IT infrastructure
2. Consolidation and optimization of the IT infrastructure by addressing deployment, security, scalability and reliability issues
3. New marketplace engine to shorten the last-minute gap
4. Big data management and data warehouse for assessing the performance of each city and route.

Impact Management
1. Synchronizing business development and IT Development – going through the process of digital transformation
2. Transition into a fast responsive and customer centric culture
3. Project promotion through meetings, events, roundtables and workshops with selected stakeholders; social media promotions; media interviews
4. Dissemination aiming at lobbying for policy and legislative changes
5. Developing a growth strategy adjusted to new markets and customers

Project Management
1. Project Office that supervises and monitors project activities and progress, coordinates project actions, assesses risks and makes contingency plans
2. Day-to-day project management - monitoring actions and communicating with team members, checking the workflow and mitigating risks
3. Management of contractual agreements & IPR
4. Data Protection Plan

The main results of the work performed during the project are:
- Developed and validated regional DRT as a basis for scalable expansion
- Data architecture established that enables decision making
- Scalable IT system with data-driven and smart transport solutions for building a profitable multi-local marketplace
- Developed Process model for establishing organizing and operating regional/central hub
- Updated Commercialization plan for the next 4 years

In Y2 we intensified our dissemination activities by attending more than 12 international transport and mobility related conferences and congresses, such as: Smart City Expo 2017 (Barcelona), Smart Towns in CE Conference (Ljubljana), TRA 2018 (Vienna), TEN-T days (Ljubljana), NOAH18 (Berlin), EBAN 2018 (Sofia), WEBIT Festival 2018 (Sofia). Our efforts have been recognized by the experts, proved by several awards received so far.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

GoOpti’s novelty to Europe has positive impacts on travellers, professional drivers and the company (international expansion to 30 M€ revenue with a potential EBITDA of 3 M€ in 2020). In addition, the project provides a major step towards the Single European Transport Area, increases mobility, connectivity of people and places, sustainability of transport and the environment.

GoOpti has grown from 10 employees in 2014 to 40 in 2017 and from 3.118.566 € revenue (GMV) in 2014 to 8.876.258 € in 2017. With its service it has expanded to 8 European countries, where is present daily: Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Italy, Germany, Austria, Hungary and Spain. Statistics show that the GoOpti platform has so far provided transfers to more than 1,200,00 passengers and it serves 51 cities and 41 airports around Europe. It connects transport companies from Slovenia, Italy, Croatia and Spain. During project implementation, we have established 20 new jobs within GoOpti and generated more than 150 new employments for our partners. Based on our analysis, transport companies in our platform generate 3-times bigger turnover compared to before joining the platform.

Moreover, we measure the impact of our service also by these statistics:
Nb of Franchisees: 18
Nb of Passengers every month: 29,000+
Partner Network: 1800+
NPS: 75
Transfers carried out so far: 145,000
Fewer Co2 emissions: 14,000t

GoOpti is pursuing its vision to make the world more accessible by providing the best in class service and become a better choice than a personal car. Our future is focused on further development and expansion of our network. We are pleased to receive cooperation proposals from many different European countries, like Poland, Switzerland, Luxembourg and France, as well as from other countries in the world - from Canada, Argentina, Australia and India.

GoOpti transportation van