Say hello to Volt Lines.
A new generation of smart corporate shuttle bus service in Istanbul.
(Türkçe için, lütfen buraya tıklayınız)
I’m very excited to announce the start of a new venture that my team and I have brought to life over the last 5 months. Volt Lines aims to bring 4 years of smart mobility know-how to the corporate shuttle bus market, or as it’s known in Turkey: “Personel Servisi”.
What is Volt Lines
There are more than 50,000 buses in Istanbul, carrying daily more than 1,000,000 employees from home to work and back. Companies pay on behalf of each employee an average of $100/month, making this market a billion dollar industry in Istanbul alone!
The current industry can be characterized as closed and rigid and is offering extremely limited innovation to its customers. Current bus companies offer dedicated buses for every company leading to very low occupancy, long routes and high prices.
200 seats are being used to drive around 100 employees; hence, wasting half of the vehicles’ capacity. Volt Lines wants to change that.
How Does Volt Lines Work?
Volt Lines sells a company of 100 employees, 100 seats on a monthly subscription basis (instead of the yearly negotiated routes with the bus companies). Volt Lines buses are then shared across neighboring companies, usually in the same business center (Plaza in Turkish). This automatically makes routes incredibly more efficient; therefore, saving companies money, reducing the number of vehicles needed, and shortening each route because of more efficient pickups and routing thanks to the higher scale.
With Volt Lines:
- Companies save up to 15% while getting simple/seat-based pricing, live insights, and state of the art technology that ensures employee safety, comfort and satisfaction.
- Drivers earn better money thanks to our higher route efficiency, driver gamification, referral program, and smart matrix routing.
- Employees get a mobile app that allows them to better coordinate with the bus driver, get live ETA updates and bus movement on the map, manage upcoming bookings, and change evening destination straight from the app.
We took everything we’ve learnt as a team over the past 4 years, applied it in a whole different industry, and the result looks incredibly promising!
When will Volt Lines Be Operational?
Things are moving quite fast for us on the commercial, technical as well as operational side. We have been in talks with potential customers from the very first inception of the idea of Volt Lines and initial interest is very promising. So far we have analyzed transport data for 8 companies delivering them a Shuttle Performance Report that showcases the upside that can be achieved by selling and sharing seats instead of their current solution. The insights are exciting and allow us to continue building our understanding of the industry and help us determine where most upsides lay.
On Monday 30th of October 2017, we got our license from the municipality of Istanbul, signed our first customer, signed our first driver, and started our first operations test drive. On Wednesday 1st of November 2017, we carried our first passengers! Here are a few pictures from our operations!
On Investment
We incorporated the new company on October 20th, 2017 with Fırat İşbecer as our first angel investor. We’re hoping to close our seed round in late November/Early December with exciting names that will join us in this journey. We’re also happy to see Volt’s old investors continue this journey with us in Volt Lines.
On Tech Product
Our technological development is also going rapidly with the driver and passenger app expected to hit the app store at the end of this month, followed closely by our HR web app. Also we have just launched our website, so please have a look yourself at voltlines.com.
Keen to hear your thoughts!
PS: we’re continuing in our office in Kolektif House Levent, so please say hi whenever you’re around. Also our team is expected to double in size over the next few months, especially in business development and operations. So if you or anyone you know is looking for a chance to be part of a startup that wants to change the world, then send your CV to apply@voltlines.com with the subject “Read about Volt Lines and I want to help build it!”.
If you’re still reading, here’s the story of Volt to Volt Lines Transition
Volt failed for so many reasons that I’ll cover in a separate post next week. In it, I’ll explain in-depth why we couldn’t make it, the struggles, the wins, and why I believe it’s not going to happen anytime soon. But for now, I want to share with you the story of how Volt Lines came to life, from the ashes of Volt.
Volt reached a peak supply of 26k driver trips per month, but that wasn’t enough for us to reach the critical mass needed to make on-demand ridesharing a reality. By April 2017, I realized that Volt is going nowhere, and a pivot/shutdown has to be pulled through within the next 3months of our remaining runway.
At first, I tried selling Volt’s white label to corporates, where a company’s employees can use our product/technology to share rides with each other. By the first meeting, I realized the idea was shit, and no one cared. Instead of pushing my sell, I asked the question every salesman/entrepreneur should ask: “What is your biggest mobility pain point that a tech smart mobility startup like us can help you solve?”.
More than 6 companies gave me more or like the same answer: “we have no idea what you do and how you can help us, but if you’re asking about a mobility pain point for us, it’s the shuttle buses.”.
Coming from the sharing economy, my obvious next question was: “Do you mind sharing these buses with other neighboring companies or companies in your Plaza?”. Again all companies had the same answer: “As long as our employees are given a good service, and not put with employees of competition, we have no problem whatsoever”.
One CEO put it really nicely by saying: “Our employees might as well use public transportation for commute, but in a city the size of Istanbul, this can sometimes take a lot of time and transfers. What you’re offering is a premium/white-collar only, dynamic public transportation network, and by all means, we’re interested”.
We kept Volt in the name because 1) I personally like the brand :), and 2) I don’t think many people outside our geek/tech community know about Volt, hence the lack of reason to kill a good/simple/international name.
Please follow this space for updates and insights about Volt Lines and smart mobility in general.
