Neosentec tryed to determine the profitability of our assistant as a business and its scalability.
Lazzus has been tested on relevant international markets spanning over two dozen countries, including USA, several Central and South American Countries and many EU countries. We ran market tests based on two service modalities articulating one offer with the potential to increase autonomy and expand live experiences for thousands of blind and visual impaired persons.Appropriate engagement is the key to reach significative market penetration and essential for delivering sustainable competitive advantage, lowering risk for investors, and increasing confidence among commercial partners. We devoted a part of this study to conduct a deep market research looking into the market size, both in volume and in value, going deeper into the demographics and the segmentation of reachable users and their needs, sizing up the competition, unveiling triggers and selling points, and assessing the economic environment in terms of entry barriers and regulation.
During the execution of this study on the feasibility of Lazzus, we have detected several problems in terms of competition, market, and business model and scalability, which, together with limitations that we were already confronting in relation to the technology, the size of the team and the size of the market, lead to the conclusion that the business project is not viable.
The key issues are the following:
• Market size: While it remains a fact that the number of visually impaired people is very high, our solution has only proved to be truly attractive for people who are completely blind or have a very high visual disability. This significantly reduces our market size. Furthermore, we have verified that our target market is only a small fraction of said market, made up of a minority of people with severe visual impairment who are especially skilled in handling intelligent communication devices. The volume of a realistically reachable market resulting from this analysis does not match to our expectations to boost the growth of our small company and its chances of success in Spanish and international markets base upon further development of this business idea.
• Technology limitation: GPS accuracy failures impede Lazzus from providing a truly satisfying user experience. The European Global Navigation Satellite System, Galileo, which would enable Lazzus to solve this problem, is not fully operational yet.
• Google has modified its Maps and Places technology, including a significant change in the prices of services required for Lazzus operation, which has been multiplied by almost four. Lazzus depends on these services to operate. Such an important increase in our operational cost will result in a decrease of our customer base.
• Our competitor Lazarillo, based in Chile, and operating with a non-scalable free model, is improving its application at a very good rate. We believe that in a few months they could equal us or even surpass us.
Neosentec, owner the Lazzus brand and its technology, has decided to transfer these assets to a company specialized in provision of tiflotechnic mobility services, and to focus our own resources on enabling a sale in the short / medium term that allows to recover the investment.
The decision to abandon the initial business plan has been explained.
