When we first wrote about mobi.lity, the traveller information startup from Cape Town, it had already won a pitch to Western Cape transport agency, Metrorail for its prototype mobile transit app.
A short while later, Metrorail officially adopted the service and rebranded it as GoMetro. Since then, GoMetro has seen impressive adoption, and it has become an indispensable utility for over 600 000 railway commuters in South Africa.
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Through a partnership with iROKO Partners, the world’s largest online distributor of African music and movies, and expansion to Gauteng, GoMetro has seen steady adoption in its first six months of operation, and it still has plenty of room to grow. GoMetro will be launching in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape in the next quarter, as well as rolling out its first bus services — MyCiti in Cape Town and Metrobus in Johannesburg. Version 2.0 of the GoMetro service is set to launch in June 2013.
GoMetro provides real-time, up to the minute train schedules and associated platform changes, a trip planner, fare calculator as well as route maps and tourist & business services. GoMetro also provides added value services, in the form of news and entertainment content. Justin Coetzee, mobi.lity’s founder and CEO, tells us that these services are being successfully monetised through advertising.
Coetzee says that his company is still bootstrapping and nearing ramen profitability — and indication that a mobi.lity is making just enough to pay its founders’ living expenses.
Instead of a tradional press release, GoMetro compiled some key highlights for the first 6 months of the service in infographic form. Take a look at the preview below. For the full version, click on the image.
Some of the stats are staggering. 1.5 million real-time update requests — 635 000 in March alone and 5.5 million projected for 2013. It’s also interesting to note that BlackBerry is still the dominant mobile OS.
For the full version, click on the image.
