RideTandem

Idea

Introduction

RideTandem is on a mission to help people get to work by building flexible, sustainable transport.

Public transport is broken outside of big cities. It’s expensive, unreliable and not available when people need it. Too often passengers are left with two choices - car ownership or not going to work

We use tech to create new, green ways to get to sites where there’s no public transport.

Our services are delivered in partnership with local, licensed, often family-run, minibus and coach companies.

Passengers book and pay for their seats through the RideTandem app.

They live track vehicle location and get real-time service updates.

Employers monitor service through the RideTandem dashboard and can access data on utilisation, performance, and more.

We’re growing through a B2B2C approach, selling services to businesses who are struggling to recruit people because people can't get to where those jobs are, or who are looking to reduce their Scope 3 carbon emissions.

Substantial accomplishments to date

#1 We're growing fast - Revenue grew 3.5x YoY in 2022, currently on an annualised run rate of nearly £6m GMV/£1m ARR*

#2 Trusted by leading employers - We work with some of the largest businesses in the UK, including Lidl, Next, and Royal Mail.

#3 Innovative technology - RideTandem was named Transport Tech Company of the Year 2022 by the UK Business Tech Awards.

#4 Strong client satisfaction - Net Promoter Score of 81 (Excellent) based upon a company survey in April 2023.

#5 Social impact - we estimate that nearly £40m of wages have been earned in roles people couldn't have accessed without RideTandem to date (assumes £9.50/hour increasing to £10.50/hour after September 2021; with an 8-hour working day on average).

#6 Environmental impact - more than 20 passengers per RideTandem vehicle compared to the average commuter car of 1.16 passengers.

#7 Experienced investors - backed by a range of leading funds (e.g. 1818VC, Ascension, Blackfinch, Sustainable Ventures) and angel investors (including the founders of Allplants, Heights, and OLIO)

*Based on unaudited management accounts.

Monetisation strategy

The financial risk in launching new services is ‘underwritten’ by our B2B/B2G clients. We collect passenger fares through our app and if the sum of those fares is less than the total cost of running the service (including RideTandem’s profit margin added on top) then we invoice the B2B/B2G customer for the difference.

For example - assume the cost of one of our route services is £530/day (after accounting for the normal cost of our transport partner's service and RideTandem's profit margin on top). Passengers are charged £5 for a return trip. If there are for example 100 passengers across two shifts per day, then £500 of passenger fares would be collected, meaning that the underwriting client like an employer would pay just £30/day to cover the remaining shortfall.

The underwriting model also means that clients have a strong incentive to market RideTandem’s service to the passengers.

Use of proceeds

We don't have to invest capex in our own vehicles because of our partnership with local transport providers so the majority of proceeds will be spent on growing our team. In particular:

a) more sales, marketing and customer success team members to diversify our channel mix, engage in proactive upselling for existing clients, and capture increasingly larger new business opportunities.

b) more product/tech team members to continue growing the value of our platform for our transport partners, passengers and B2B clients.

c) hiring team members overseas (some of our UK-based clients have expressed interest in working with us in other parts of Europe and we’re working on a pilot and launch in one country).