No credit card to drive! How City Drive Hire have opened up the Zambian car hire market

The landlocked country is just south of Malawi, Tanzania and DRC, and has the great Zambezi river as it's border with Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia.

Economically there's a lot of copper and mining exports, and my sense is that the development of local services is most in line with Uganda or Tanzania, rather than Kenya (more developed) or Rwanda (less developed).

In this episode, I speak with Greg, who runs a car hire company from the capital Lusaka.

It started 10 years ago and now has operations across the country.

I really enjoy hearing how businesses in the region adapt traditional business models to provide a superior service to existing alternatives.

Yes, there's a lot of excitement in developing off-grid solar solutions using mobile money, but there's also a lot of merit in running a business with professional service that an emerging economy is going to demand.

In this case, good quality and reliable car rentals.

Greg and I discuss the company's formation, how they modify their cars for Zambian roads (such as switching out the Japanese cold weather tyres), how their fleet is now over 500 cars through an innovative leasing programme, and how the payback on vehicles they purchase, is just 4-6 months.

There's also lots of good advice from Greg about building a company organically and strategically thinking about where you can be valuable to clients.

As always, you can head to www.theeastafricabusinesspodcast.com to learn more about the company featured.

READ MORE AT:
https://theeastafricabusinesspodcast.com/2019/10/24/no-credit-card-to-drive-how-city-drive-hire-have-opened-up-the-zambian-car-hire-market