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Uber to pursue potential startup partnership

Kenya , 24 Aug 2015

Uber to pursue potential startup partnership

International taxi app service Uber is looking to partner with OkHI, a Kenya-based startup venture that links users with physical addresses via a next generation platform.

Uber's fray into Africa has been met with challenges, including low penetration of credit card payments. Although the company has adopted to use cash payments, the lack of formal addresses on the continent is still a huge one.

Africa does not have comprehensive address systems and this impacts on the transportation services' pickup time.

To solve this, Uber is looking to partner with OkHI, a mapping and address company.

OkHI is a start up venture focused on the provision of next generation physical address system through which users are able to source virtual addresses. This would include their unique geo location combined with the picture of the user's address.

Speaking at the launch of cash payments in Nairobi, Uber's international launcher, Alastair Curtis said that they are testing the partnership with OkHI.

"We find that in Nairobi, often the driver and the rider would be within fifty metres of each other," Curtis explained.

"These [OkHI] are ex-Google mapping experts and they are trying to reduce the amount of time a driver will find a rider," Curtis said.

"We are entering into a testing phase at the moment. If we could get a driver to a rider faster as a result of this partnership with OkHI then we would have improved driver efficiency in our system," he added.

OkHI is said to be conducting private tests with a local e-commerce entity.

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