Play #1: Deposit, Referral or Bust?
Make the most of early hardware by doing two things: testing the whole ‘bundle’ and getting users to play: deposit, referral or bust?
Use this play to answer two of our key challenges:
- Sustainability post-pilot stage: the tech use case is not sustainable post pilot stage, either through donor funding, private investment, government take up or commercial revenue.
- Awareness building: Our end user (person or organisation) isn’t aware of the tech or its benefits.
This play is part of our Frontier Technology Playbook: Plays by DfID Pioneers to Overcome Development Challenges. Click here to read the other plays and an introduction to the Playbook.
The Pilot: Electric Motos in Rwanda
If electric motorcycles are successfully introduced and taken up by the Rwandan moto taxi market, they could decrease transport costs for customers, improve livelihoods for drivers, and reduce emissions.
The Pioneers: Ampersand
Electric motos are expensive to produce; within our pilot we could only produce a handful. And we needed them to answer two key questions: 1) what bike design and access to charging should we offer to taxi drivers, at what price? 2) How might we spread the news about this new taxi in a market with lots of established players?
To answer the first question, we designed three sales pitches to taxi drivers: one with a traditionally designed bike, a second with a traditionally designed bike + battery swaps included; and a third with a modern bike in look and feel. We gave these three pitches to three separate groups of taxi drivers, to see which generated most interest.
To answer the second, we gave these three groups of taxi drivers three options after the pitch: 1) put down a 5% deposit; 2) refer 5 other taxi drivers to sign up; or 3) do nothing. The first gave us a tangible sense of interest in the sales pitch and provided our first users. The second gave us our first advocates and spread the word, giving us more potential sign-ups and helping attract further investment.
The Practice: Top Tips for Success
- This works best when your users are relatively homogenous — the findings from small groups can be better extrapolated to the rest!
- If doing multiple pitches, change only your most critical variable(s) and keep everything else constant
- Honour your commitments, manage expectations and don’t over-promise to users
Get in touch
Email info@ampersand.solar to find out more.
