The Hybrid Approach ft. The Emerging Market Approach

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bloXmove

6 min readMay 25, 2022

A few weeks ago, bloXmove took another important step to going global with the announcement of our Nigerian product. bloXmoveNG is the result of months of hard work by the core bloXmove team in synergy with our dedicated local team on the ground in Nigeria with a view of launching the first live products by late summer 2022.

The unfolding of our first emerging market offering in Nigeria has necessitated the team to expand its go-to-market strategy to sync with the local realities, peculiar requirements, and opportunities that each market presents. To this end, bloXmove has defined distinct structural blueprints in a modular design, which are:

The hybrid approach in markets like Germany and the Netherlands
The emerging-market approach in markets like Nigeria

Hybrid for Developed and Regulated Markets

Markets in European countries like Germany and The Netherlands are characterized by companies with long histories and deep traditions. Markets in this space tend to have expansive legacy IT systems built around centralized infrastructure and companies typically have unique accounting tools, central databases with special regulation as well as safety standards, and CRM mechanisms. These overarching factors mean that customers have countless options to pay for mobility services in fiat which then translates to tons of aggregation apps and a plethora of transportation companies often subsidized by governments. These structures of systems and institutions lead to a special dynamic related to changes, decision-making processes, and motivation.

For bloXmove, the opportunity here is in helping to define the standards and frameworks for a future decentralized mobility ecosystem. Rather than providing day-to-day operational solutions, we are concentrating on using our suite of distributed technologies in building bridges between the legacy technologies that most companies rely on and the ledger technology. bloXmove serves as a low-hanging fruit facilitator that allows companies deeply rooted in legacy systems to experiment and build forward into the future where decentralized infrastructure enables constructive collaboration between competing mobility companies. Tokens on this end are only used as internal value units allowing operators to continue operating while making a careful transition into the blockchain world with minimal pain.

bloXmove’s sweet spot lies in the consumption-based settlement which can be run by the Mobility Blockchain Platform in a very secure and automated way between all the strong, regulated, and self-sufficient organizations. Based on distributed ledger technology, private companies, public institutions, associations, and governmental bodies can cooperate in a federal value network. Thinking in linear value chains was the mechanism of the industrial age, and thinking in united value networks is the presence and the future. In those hybrid setups, we assume to have mixed modules of centralized systems and decentralized ledgers and a collaborative operational model based on business frame contracts. Those can be smart as well as automated and we will change the relations of power, but on the same hand, we are also realistic that we will not eliminate middlemen-institutions everywhere. That’s why we call it the hybrid approach.

The ‘Emerging Market’ Approach

Nigeria like most other emerging markets has a vibrant business-focused mobility industry that caters to millions of commuters and travelers every day. To create a product that fits right at home in this bustling industry, we are adopting a more crypto-focused offering that leverages the business needs and high crypto adoption of the country. We’ve categorized our potential customers in Nigeria into two broad subsets; the big-scale major fleet operators and the small-scale/individual mobility enterprises.

For the big players, bloXmoveNG is targeting major luxury bus outfits in locations like Lagos and Port Harcourt as well as other fleet operators in other states. Although these operators are big-time in Nigeria (some with thousands of buses in their fleet), the majority of them have little to no tech embedded in their service delivery. To book a trip, the passenger needs to physically carry themselves to the bus operator’s offices or motor parks from where they depart for trips. This creates a lot of inconvenience for the traveler and loses the company a lot in resources for maintaining paper booking mechanisms and a bloated personnel payroll.

bloXmoveNG is creating a white-label solution where these players are offered non-branded apps they can customize to their colors and tweak to match their business models. The company can then market itself as a tech-savvy company that can take online bookings, process payments, and keep accurate records of passengers to its customers. This boutique-style solution requires no app development commitment or day-to-day backend maintenance from the company. bloXmove handles all the heavy lifting while taking a minor percentage in transaction fees, freeing the operator’s time and resources to focus on growth and expansion.

Joining bloXmoveNG via this option also opens new business opportunities for these companies, as they are now part of a super-network of mobility operators from all parts of the country. Customers of sister operators who need to travel to places where their primary providers have no assets get matched with our white label customers automatically, unlocking a new stream of customers they would otherwise miss.

For smaller-scale companies and individual drivers selling intracity trips to customers, we will be rolling out a fully branded bloXmoveNG app. This solution will have a simple and easy-to-access onboarding process for companies, and individual drivers working for themselves. Equipped with their phone numbers and within a few short steps, the customer is ready to start offering their services and earning on the platform.

Putting BLXM at the Center of It All

It’s no secret how Nigeria is big in crypto adoption. But at just over 30%, this leaves two-thirds of the country’s population out of the crypto loop. Mobility is at the heart of our daily existence as humans, and bloXmoveNG is a platform that is inclusive and built to have a very low barrier to entry. We are adopting a crypto-first but fiat-bridged payment option for Nigeria to ensure that everyone who needs to travel, whether crypto-native or not, can easily do so on our platform.

Users who are crypto savvy can use BLXM natively to pay for all their trips, short and long-distance. The user app will be equipped with a non-custodial wallet that the customer can load with BLXM tokens and access all the mobility solutions they need. Users who are not yet familiar with crypto are not excluded. With the help of our local on-ramp partners, bloXmoveNG will have a fiat payment option via credit/debit cards, local bank transfers, and USSD codes. Users can either pre-load up their profiles using fiat with bloXcredit or simply pay automatically when they take trips with the cards they attached to their profiles. All transactions in fiat will 100% be interfaced with BLXM in the backend in concordance with our tech roadmap goal for 2022.

Covering all Bases

Thinking hard on what every market needs and putting the required effort to create solutions that address gaps in such markets is the secret to bloXmove’s building success. We understand that there is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to mobility. Through our modest yet determined efforts, we are confident that we will be at the frontiers of creating a truly global and decentralized mobility industry. Whether you are in Nigeria with its bustling crypto industry or are in Germany where companies are pondering how to take their services into the future, bloXmove is here to plug the gaps, unlock the doors, and take advantage of the opportunities. The good thing is, technology always finds standards and blueprints which we can scale on a universal level. Therefore we learn with the two strategic approaches how to tackle two main types of markets, business partners and societies.

We continue our all-weather building process and hope that in a few months from now, we will begin to feel the real-world impact of our efforts in places like Nigeria, Germany, and elsewhere.