Acquisition project | Shoffr

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Acquisition project | Shoffr

Ever heard the song, "Yun Hi Chala Chal Rahi" from Swades?

No?

Even if you have, why don't we listen to this together while reading on?

https://open.spotify.com/track/3GrTI5vAoDD3VE24VTBJAc?si=ac12d213860b4a2c

Okay, till the sings intro kicks in, let's get into the intro of this project.

This song, kicks in the emotion of travelling, doesn't it?

I myself start singing this song when I start to pack for that trip that I am about to take that has kept me excited since couple of months. All the planning and excitement is now going into implementation mode. I am sure, you also get excited in the same way about your "most awaited trip".

And the first step to your fun trip - you have to reach to airport via cab. This is the beginning of your trip. Now imagine, if the cab shows up late? Or you get cancellations from the drivers of Uber/Ola? Or you get a very substandard cleanliness in the cab that you got? Or the luggage you have does not fit in the cab and you have to get another one?

YOU DON'T WANT TO RUIN THE BEGINNING OF YOUR MOST AWAITED TRIP, DO YOU?

Enter,

SHOFFR

Shoffr is a Bengaluru based EV premium cab service. It provides airport shuttle service with comfortable rides and professional "chaufferrs" all while not being too heavy on your wallet. With Airtport transfers, Shoffr also provides rentals and outstation services.

Now the intro of the song has also done. Shall we get into the depth of this product?

What is Shoffr solving?

While the regular cab booking apps solve for moving from point A to B, Shoffr is addressing the problem of comfort and convienience. An elite group of people staying in Bengaluru face the problem of unsureity of reaching airport on time. Even if they find a ride, they are left unsatisfied with the car condition or driver proffessionalism.

How is Shoffr solving it?

Shoffr has 3 basic solutions for this

Luxury Cars : All cars are from BYD SUV, which means they are electric (sound free, environment friendly) and they are big enough for comfort and space for luggage. Plus they are maintained regularly.
Professional Chauffuers : Chauffuers at Shoffr at meticulously trained for servicing customers at the top of it's quality. They are trained to talk less, be polite, solve problems and most importantly, be empathatic and helpful.
Seemless Experience : Shoffr has multiple booking possibilities for customers, via App on iOS, Android, Website, Whatsapp and Call. Once booked, the cab does not cancel. Payment can be made earlier or later as per as customer's need.

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Shoffr uses these solutions together for 3 use cases :

Airport Transfers - One of the most used use cases by it's customers. We will see why in detail later.
City Rentals - This is for customers coming to Bengaluru for business and have multiple meetings in the city in the day.
Outstation Trip - For people staying in Bengaluru and looking to spend their weekends outside city, this feature is for them.

For this project, we will be considering Airport Transfer section to deep dive into. This particular feaeture solves the dependency and luxury issue of the users.

Who Is Using Shoffr (The User)

As a part of this project, data from 10 users was collected about their usage of Shoffr. Here are few insights that came to light via research

Insights from User Research

1. 90% of the users were referred to Shoffr by their network through WOM to use it

2. 60% of them said the first time they used it was because their Uber/Ola cancelled on them

3. 100% of the users booked Shoffr more than once, average frequecy being 45 days

4. All of them have good things to say about their Chauffuers

5. They all valued the personal touch that the company brings, ie Whatsapp and call support

6. The most loved part of the experience was "On time and no cancellation"

After collecting this data, we can now figure out who is the ideal user of Shoffr.

ICP

Ideal Customer Profile, is the most crucial segment of drafting a great acquisition strategy.
All the strategies you build, will be build for these ICP's and hence ICP selection is a crucial.

Criteria	User 1	User 2
Name	Kalyani Kumar	Varun Tripathi
Age	42	35
Demographics	Female Master's Degree Stays In Bengaluru with Family Married, Has 2 Children Works As VP in Microsoft Vehicle ownership : 1	Male Bachelor's Degree Stays Alone In Bengaluru Family in Delhi Works As Senior Designer in Startup Vehicle Ownership : None
Need	Her job requires her to fly frequently to various metro cities in India and Abroad. She goes to Airport at least 2 times a month	He only travels out of Bangalore by flight. He either goes home to visit his parents, or to travel. He frequents airport visits at least once in 3 months
Pain Point	She is always irritated by the service of Uber, as they don't guarantee a booking at the needed time, resulting into either delay at airport or flight miss.	He doesn't like the cabs of Uber/Ola, they are small, he can carry only limited luggage and it does not give him the feel of comfort, which at his at his age, he needs it while travelling through the traffic of Bengaluru
Shoffr Hook	No Cancellations, No Missed Flights	Feel The Luxury Of Airplane While Travelling To Airport Too
Trigger To Use Shoffr	When she is downstairs waiting for her Uber to arrive and the driver cancels.	While chilling with friends/coworkers, when they talk about their unsatisfactory experience of Uber/Ola and someone recommends Shoffr

The Market

TAM - Total Cab market in India - $20 Billion in 2024

SAM - Total Cab Market used to travel to airport in India - 53% - $10.6 Billion

SOM - Total Cab Market In Bangalore that travels to Airport - $187 Million

We saw the What, Why and the Who of this project so far. Let's get into the bigger HOW!

Core Value Proposition

From many value propositions that this company has to offer, we will go ahead and pick the most core.

For travellers going to Airport, Shoffr gives them a no cancellation guarantee, because the customer relies on the cab and pre books it according to the timing of their flight. Any cancellation or delay, sets panic in customer's life. This state of "No panic" when it comes to Shoffr is our Core Value Proposition

For this core value proposition, we will devise a plan for acquiring customers. Just reminding (in case you got lost in listening to that amazing track)!

Let's take a quick view of where does Shoffr as a startup stand.

Shoffr has been active since 2 years now and has reached over 1000 bookings in a month. Shoffr has moved past it's PMF and is in early scaling stage where they need to experiment their channels to get to more customers.

In Early Scaling stage, the company is usually looking to experiment on various channels to acquire customers.

Let's do a quick analysis of the channels at disposal for Shoffr

Channel Name	Cost	Flexibility	Effort	Speed	Scale
Organic	Medium	High	Medium	Low	High
Paid Ads	High	High	Medium	High	High
Referral Program	Low	Low	Low	High	High
Product Integration	High	High	High	Low	Low
Content Loops	Low	High	Low	High	High

At this stage, Shoffr needs to smartly spend money and do experiments to figure out their channels.

Hence an ideal channel will be

"Low Cost, Low Effort, High Speed"

Going by the analysis,

We will select 3 channels for Acquisition, namely :

Organic
Referral Program
Content Loops

Organic Channel

Let's have a look at currently what drives traffic to Shoffr's website

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Based on the above available data,

Few Observations

- Shoffr's keyword type that is working is it's brand name.

- Most likely people hear or read about Shoffr and only then they search.

- Shoffr currently relies on only organic

That is a notable achievement by the company that has taken them to more than 1000 bookings a month. But to notch it up a level, we now need to expand our search criterias and be present in other sections as well.

Experiments On Keywords

Now, if you remember, our ICP's are looking for alternate option to UBER/Ola. Why don't we start our experiment on this use case?

Keywords To Experiment

Alternate To Uber - search volume/month : 500
Alternate to Ola - search volume/month : 500
Uber Competitors - search volume/month : 200
Ola Competitors - search volume/month : 300
Better Cabs Than Ola - search volume/month : 700
Better Cabs than Uber - search volume/month : 400
On Time Cabs To Airport - search volume/month : 500

How Do We Experiment On Keywords

These keywords provide a search volume of around 3000/month. Currently no competitor is acing this section, hence it is easy on the rank to SEO.

Keyword	SEO Distribution Channel	How?
Alternate To Uber	Blog On Website	This can be a blog page on website, highlighting why Shoffr is better than Uber. Systematically diving deep into every issues faced of Uber customers while giving them real testimonials and how Shoffr solves these issues with their services.
Alternate To Ola	Blog On Website	This can be a blog page on website, highlighting why Shoffr is better than Ola. Systematically diving deep into every issues faced of Ola customers while giving them real testimonials and how Shoffr solves these issues with their services.
Uber Competitors	Blog On Other/Media Websites	Shoffr can encourage their users who write blogs or tie up with media websites to suggest who are giving competition to Uber in Bengaluru.
Ola Competitors	Blog On Other/Media Websites	Shoffr can encourage their users who write blogs or tie up with media websites to suggest who are giving competition to Ola in Bengaluru.
Better Cabs Than Uber	Quora	Shoffr can crawl through questions on quora and answer related questions with this keyword. They can also suggest their power users on either upvoting or composing an answer for them.
Better Cabs Than Ola	Quora	Shoffr can crawl through questions on quora and answer related questions with this keyword. They can also suggest their power users on either upvoting or composing an answer for them.
On Time Cabs To Airport	Product Page	This is a core feature of the company and hence a dedicated page should have testimonials, use cases and detailed feature description on this page that can rank on this keyword search.

Content Loops

Every content loop has 3 key elements

Hook - What gets users excited
Content Creator - Who creates the content
Distribution Channel - Where the content is shared

For Shoffr, these would be :

Solving A Retention Problem At Your Organization Let’s Connect! (1).png

Hook - What's In My Shoffr
Shoffr gives extra effort to put in some complimentary snacks and drinks(water/soft drinks) in the cab for the customer. This is something that the mass cab services don't offer. This can be a hook for customers to share what they fund inside the Shoffr Cab.
Content Creator - The User
The customer while experiencing the ride discover #WhatsInMyShoffr and click a photo. People who visit "premium" places tend to click photo and show to their followers that they are using the service of a premium company. Eg - Starbucks. This offerring of snacks and drinks creates a vibe of premium service like that of how you get in a limosine. This is a sharable content.
Distribution Channel - Instagram Stories
This photo can then be posted as instagram stories, as stories are quite instant and it only lasts till 24 hours, hence we do not ask the customer for a longer comittment. This story can be viewed by their followers and come in awe of how a cab service in India offers these goodies to their riders and remind themselves to book Shoffr the next time they go to airport, so that they can too click a photo and share with their followers.

Referral Program

As mentioned earlier, one of the insights were that 90% of the users were referred by WOM. Why not create a system to refer new users to existing users and incentivise this channel.

Customer Touchpoint

Customer's AHA moment is when the cab starts towards their destination. The customer has just experienced the timeliness of the cab, the cleanliness of the cab, the snacks and drinks inside the cab and also had a warm welcome from the chauffuer. Now the customer just has to sit in the car, Average time to reach Airport from anywhere in the city is 45 mins. This is the perfect touchpoint for a customer to ask for a referral.

Brag-worthy Element

It is the fact that customer gets to travel in a luxury. Simillar perception like that of a limousine in the west.

Platform Currency

Shoffr as a company do not offer discount. But as a platform currency, it can offer points. A certain number of points can get you to an Elite Customer Status, which gets you priority for cab booking. Hence this is in form of "Access"

Referral Workflow

Solving A Retention Problem At Your Organization Let’s Connect! (2).png

Since the time spent is at the back of the car. A simple poster that gfrom the Driver/Shotgun seat, with a QR code that opens a landing page in the app.

This landing page will have a link to refer to their contacts via Whatsapp.

The message in the referral content can include :

"Hey, you know what? I just found the best option to ride to airport. This app gives a no cancellation guarantee! Can't imagine? Try yourself.

Click here to try Shoffr the next time you have to go to airport!"

How Will The Referer Track The Referral

Solving A Retention Problem At Your Organization Let’s Connect! (3).png

The user can track their referrals sent out in a tab in the profile section in their app. The link that was created while sending the referral message will have the attricutes of the profile of referrer and the referral id of the person that it is referred to.

Conclusion

Shoffr's core value proposition is something that is really driving customers to choose dependency and luxury over Uber and Ola. But as the ICP study suggests, that people when they are only travelling to Airport will need these kind of features. Hence keeping this in mind, the above mentioned strategies would work to increase acquisition of Shoffr.