👨🏿‍🚀TechCabal Each day – inDrive’s new aspect hustle

In case you’re an inDrive consumer in South Africa, you’ll start to see adverts the subsequent time you open the app to request a experience, as a substitute of simply watching the little automobile icon drive to your location. Welcome to inDrive Advertisements.

Right here’s what occurred: Journey-hailing platform, inDrive, has launched an in-app promoting platform in South Africa, putting banner adverts in what it calls “low-friction” moments, like whereas the rider waits for his or her driver or through the journey.

Why is inDrive doing this? The ride-hailing enterprise is a tightrope. Riders are price-sensitive, particularly to increments. Drivers are commission-sensitive and push for value increments. Platforms, then again, are margin-sensitive. In South Africa, the place Bolt, Uber, and inDrive already compete on value, there’s little room to squeeze both aspect with out backlash. For inDrive, adverts have change into its method out of that standoff. Promoting offers them income that doesn’t depend upon every journey.

What it means: Africa’s ride-hailing market is crowded. Whereas Uber continues to take care of a big income share, Bolt differentiates itself with decrease commissions, and inDrive, with a negotiation-based fare mannequin that appeals to price-sensitive riders. Launching adverts isn’t an admission of a failed mannequin. 

Nevertheless, it does sign that experience commissions alone might not be sufficient for long-term sustainability. 

Advertisements are the brand new aspect hustle: inDrive’s new experiment with in-app adverts just isn’t the primary SaaS monetisation play we’ve seen on the continent. In 2024, Nigeria’s Chowdeck, a meals supply app, launched in-app adverts so as to add a brand new income supply. Since then, Chowdeck has developed to working an events-based promoting enterprise on the aspect, whereas additionally promoting airtime. 

In Chowdeck’s case, it’s a super-app play. For inDrive, a ride-hailing platform, it looks like a low-effort method to make more cash throughout wait instances. But, two issues will matter: inDrive’s scale and customers’ willingness to click on on adverts whereas they wait for his or her rides. If it really works, might we see the likes of Bolt and Uber undertake the identical gimmick?