Ayoub Moutiya, co-Founder and CEO of Paparide Network, talks about how he was able to leverage the sharing economy to not only reduce traffic in cities, but also clean-up pollution along the way.
How are consumer behaving in your specific industry, why is Paparide Network important and what problem does it solve?
Today, most big cities are looking to solve issues related to traffic congestion. The solutions chosen mainly come down to building new roads, new cycling paths, new parking spaces, public transport extension, environmental taxation, etc. However, even in a city like New-York where all transportation solutions are well-developed, there are still more than 2 million vehicles on the road each day.
The «Smart City» as we see it, is being “stingy” in terms of infrastructure and being clever in terms of technology to bring value to the users and use in a more efficient manner available resources while promoting a sustainable and collaborative transportation.
What is the Paparide Network, and how does it work?
Paparide Network is a one-of- a-kind sharing platform that offers four complementary services that are reinventing mobility as we know it. They provide everything you need for your next ride using a state of the art web and mobile platforms.
With PapaRide, any individual can rent a car nearby or get it delivered from a community of local car owners or neighbors who aren’t using them.
With PapaRideshare, we connect drivers with empty seats with passengers looking for a ride to share their city-to- city car journeys with in total trust and confidence, creating a new collaborative transport network.
With PapaPark, we help parking lot owners whether they are individuals, hotels, universities, airports or companies, to optimize the use of their parking spots and to contribute to making people’s lives just a little bit easier in the city. Through the platform, drivers can search and book a guaranteed parking spot for a cheaper price.
With Papabikes, we connect riders and bike owners to bring a bike share system to our community. Bike owners make extra money by renting their equipment to like-minded people, while renters choose from a variety of rides nearby for an affordable price.
We are also developing the “Free Papabikes” Kit, which is a smart lock that can be automatically unlocked using papabikes mobile app. We will also give the opportunity to individuals who are planning to set up their own rental business with a lot of bicycles, to buy from us the “Papabikes”.
Our platform gives everyone the opportunity to optimize the use of their personal goods, or to use others goods for their own benefits by facilitating and enhancing the linking experience between the users.
Our community vision is to reduce the number of vehicles on the road by promoting a new method of collaborative transportation. Our community is based on trust and reliability and built on honest exchanges between users. Therefore, we encourage members at the end of each rental to leave useful, relevant and honest comments for the member they worked with as well as for the Paparide community in general.
We are convinced that this new method of collaborative transportation is more efficient, will improve the lives of millions, represents a real opportunity to generate income, is socially beneficial. Additionally, we strongly believe it can create a positive impact for the planet we call home with less traffic, less time wasted finding a parking spot, less CO2 emissions, and less stress for all.
Can you describe your personal journey in the creation of Paparide Network?
I graduated from HEC Montréal Business school in 2010 (BBA Corporate Finance). I was interested in the automotive industry while I was still a student. I specialized in importing damaged (Salvage title) cars from USA to Canada and then export them to Africa after repair.
The idea of developing Paparide Network started when I was working working at “Deloite” as account coodinator. I was living east side, and my workplace was in Downtown Montréal. I negotiated with a friend of mine, who was living 5minutes walking from my workplace and was working in northside, to share his Parking costs and use it while it’s empty (from 8:30am to 5:30pm).
From this personal experience and observation of the growing importance of collaborative economy systems (Airbnb’s model), I decided to develop Papapark (shared Parking service) before growing the idea to develop Paparide Network. My motivation was very high that I quite my job and self funded the company on December 2014. We launched our services on June 2016, and since that date, our growth is still increasing…
I started my Executive MBA UQAM-PARIS DAUPHINE in January 2017. My current full time job is pitching my project to as much as possible VCs.
For more details, please visit my linked profile:
How does Paparide Network differentiate itself from your competitors, or current alternatives?
We help travelers rent the car, rent the bicycle, book a Parking lot or book a seat and own the adventure. We help them move from Travelers to explorers, promoting a sustainable and collaborative transportation, and promoting the Social aspects!
We are also the first platform in the world providing 4 complementary and very synergic services, reinventing mobility as we know it. For example someone who rents his/her car on Paparide, is automatically invited to share his/her empty Parking space, and make extra cash. Someone who rent a car to travel to a different city, is invited to share his travel costs with other passengers, and to pre-book his guaranteed parking space at destination. Car owner who rented his car to somebody else on Paparide, can use Papabikes to rent a bike for his local/temporary commuting. Travellers, once at destination, can rent bikes on Papabikes to explore the new city, etc.
In addition, our new Papabikes concept is unique and innovative, and we strongly believe that we will reinvent bike sharing industry making it more convenient, sociable and affordable!
Who are your customers, and how is this evolving with the emergence of new technologies?
Commuters, drivers, travellers, Parking owners… It is evolving with the emergence of new technologies in the sense that 95% of our potential users use smartphones and have access to internet and are looking for convenience and flexibility.
What trends currently excite you in this industry?
Social selling and collaborative consumption.
Our current economic model is panting, financial, social and political crises, seem to have gone lastingly. Added to this fact, the way the internet has upset our daily habits (linking, peer exchanges, etc.) at the point of feeding mass movements (notably the Arab revolutions), and you will realize the power of the internet tool.
In terms of consumption, the digital allows anyone to optimize the use of the property they own, or to use someone else’s property for his own use, by facilitating the linking. It thus opens up possibilities hitherto undreamed. We are only at the beginning, it will become a real lifestyle, with a change of mindset for a better usage of existing resources.
We can say that we are at the third age of the internet. After the age of information (connect people to content) and social age (connect people to each other), we arrived at the third age where people connect online to share (properties, trips, time or experiences).
We are living the transition from a market economy to the network economy. And there is no turning back: the crisis is a consequence of these changes in behavior and in that way to consume effectively and widely in network.
What are your plans for future growth and development of the Paparide Network?
We first launched only in Montreal Quebec in June 2016, for honing the platform. After 3 months, we launched our services in other Canadian states (Ontario, British-Columbia). We decided to create a local awareness with coverage in local papers, magazines and tv/radio media, we greatly increased the name recognition and educated people about our business, driving new customer acquisition.
We leverage social media, which is free, easy to get started and offers a massive network of potential customers.
Our goal is to provide our potential followers with something that’s useful, interesting and shareable. We started small, once we had a great understanding of who’s consuming your content, and what they’re interested in, we started ramping up efforts creating more posts and investing on ads.
