On-demand Bike Rental – Operational challenges? Not anymore!

The days are back when people prefer riding a bike to go on short local trips. After on-demand uber like app and car-sharing, now it’s the peak time for bike-sharing service that allows people to rent a bike as their usual means of transportation.

People are appreciating this new transportation medium quickly by renting a bike.

In the past few years companies, such as Lime, have recognized the exceptional transformation occurring in the transport sector by making shared transport available for hire to potential end-users, bringing revolutions in the sharing economy.

One of the biggest names in the bike-sharing industry – Lime kicked off their operation in January 2017. Lime is growing strong in the funding game.

They’ve recently closed a series D funding of 310 million, bringing its total valuation to 2.4 billion.

Fortunately, with the universality of smartphones and advancements in bike technology, In the last few years have witnessed strong growth in the use of bike-sharing apps and services across the world.

Jugnoo.io can also help you start with a smart bike rental solution. Check out their website.

How do on-demand bike-rental companies take care of their operations hassle-free?

To ensure popularity and enhance usage companies need to maintain a steady supply of bikes in areas where demand is high. They also need to ensure bikes are serviced regularly and the quality expected from lime is maintained.

The right technology is the cutting edge to stand out in the growing bike-rental industry.

Many companies are offering on-demand bike nowadays, and they all have different ways to ensure their bike maintenance.

In this article, we’ll talk about how Lime take care of their bike maintenance. 

The three main aspects that need to be covered in their operations:

Rebalancing

Lime needs to ensure a balanced supply of bikes in all hours of the day.  Especially in the areas where the demand is high and brings good business for the company. Unavailability of bikes can hamper the company’s growth as the customer might lose the trust and faith in the brand.

To ensure availability of bikes, the company employs a combination of independent contractors and employees to redistribute bikes to stations so they’re readily available to customers in more locations. This process is known as rebalancing.

Recharging

Just like any regular bike, Lime bike is going to need routine maintenance and recharging bike battery is one of the most important amongst them.

Lime employs “Lime Juicer” to collect bikes and charge them wherever there is an available electrical outlet. Juicers are told where to pick up and drop off the e-scooters after charging them overnight.

Bike maintenance

Fueling battery is one of the many components that count in the bike maintenance, there are several others like cleaning, brake pads, tires, lubrication.

To keep a check on other components of bike maintenance, the company employs surveyors. Surveyors move around in a particular geofence. They go to different stations in the same geo-fence for bike inspections and mark bikes requiring maintenance. This information is passed on to different service providers to ensure well-maintained bikes for customers.

How does Tookan help overcome the operational challenges in the on-demand bike-sharing industry ?

Cutting edge technology is the key to manage bike maintenance seamlessly. With the right technology, you can automate maintenance operations, and eliminate the paper trail boosting your business growth.

Tookan allows you to manage all three aspects of bike operations in bike maintenance single-handedly

1. Rebalancing – Tookan allows you to ensure the rebalancing of bikes done in the meantime by generating tasks via API and pushed to the rebalancing team via auto-allocation. You can ensure the rebalancing of your bikes in a few minutes. No regular phone call, your rebalancing team is just a click away.

2. Recharging – With Tookan you can easily figure out bikes low on battery before they breakdown in between hampering your brand image. Tookan creates automated tasks once the bike travels predefined miles.

Tookan allows you to create automated tasks on the admin dashboard and pushes them to your team using auto-allocation in the Tookan Agent app. Once the task is accepted, they carry the bike to an electrical outlet, charge them and deliver it back.

This is how you can ensure the rebalancing of charged bikes around the city.

3. Bike maintenance – Tookan is a robust and flexible technology, it allows you to ensure your surveyor’s location by marking a geo-fence. Surveyor can create tasks against the bike number requiring maintenance. These tasks are created with different tags and templates in Tookan to make sure that the tasks are assigned to the right service provider.

For example, a bike with the braking issue can be assigned using the “braking pads” tags to the mechanic responsible to fix it. Surveyors can create multiple tasks against the same bike using the appropriate tags while creating the tasks.

Tookan makes it so easy to manage maintenance operations for Lime. Advanced Tookan features like tags, templates make task creation simple for different category of maintenance.
With the right technology in hand, businesses grow at a pace of 2X.

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