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Army retiree (former Kantha Balakaya) Jeewa Shanthi Kusum is amongst the latest entrants to the PickMe network
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Ride hailing and food deliveries have reached pre-COVID numbers for PickMe, pointing towards the economy starting to get back on its feet by December 2022. In the last year alone, the app based mobile operator registered over 40,000 new drivers into their network, showing robust growth for the PickMe platform.
PickMe CEO Jiffry Zulfer says, 2022 was a successful year for PickMe as the company was able to expand their services further by connecting their new driver partners across all their verticals. The new driver registrations spanned 25 cities with the highest number of 20,947, i.e. 52% of the total number of new registrants recorded from Colombo. Gampaha had 8,141 and Kandy 3,665 registrants, making up 20% and 9% respectively. The rest, spread across the other 22 cities, make up the balance 19%. The company introduced many verticals during the pandemic, building on PickMe Food and expanding to Market, Flash, Rentals as well as Scan n go.
“By increasing our driver partners, PickMe is now in a better position to service all these verticals and we hope to further increase our driver partners, so that our network will be accessible in all parts of the country. Currently, we operate in 25 cities, including Jaffna, Puttalam, Anuradhapura, Badulla with Polonnaruwa and Trincomalee being the latest,” Zulfer added.
He said that there are several factors contributing to the company’s growth. Colombo’s growth rate remains stable mainly because PickMe operates a fuel distribution outlet to service their network. The macro economic factors also contributed to more drivers joining the network, i.e. people looking for other income opportunities. From a customer point of view, demand for PickMe increased due to a change in trend in terms of how customers perceived the service during the fuel crisis. “This was especially so with tuk-tuks, because those operating outside the PickMe network during the fuel crisis quoted erratic fares to customers.”
Other main changes in trends PickMe sees for growth in post-COVID numbers is the fact that more and more private car owners are looking at using PickMe as an alternative due to high maintenance cost of vehicles as well as their convenience. “People in urban areas are using services because of the cost factor, where our prices remain dynamic and are managed in a way that would not burden the common man. At the same time, we give our drivers a fair price for their hours of service. The main criteria here is cost saving,” says Zulfer.
