Keeling Curve

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Project Summary / Description:

The purpose of the project is to implement a bike/e-scooter sharing and rental scheme to low to medium income communities in Metro Manila, in campuses and eventually in other areas in the city. The project will have the potential to replace trips made on tricycles and Jeepneys (for the first and last mile trips) and also bus and motorcycle trips. A unique feature of the project is the partnership with community partners. Instead of investing in expensive hardware (dock stations, locks, etc) for the bike stations, the company has partnered with mostly women in low-income communities.

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Women 

When we pivoted our approach to renting by bringing the bikes closer to the users, we have started with the wife of our in-house mechanic, Edgar. It was Edgar‚ suggestion for Tipaklong to provide his wife Rosemarie at least 10 bikes for her to rent to their neighbors. After just over a month, Rosemarie is now earning Php 3,000 (USD 62.5) a month. It is not much but is a huge help for Edgar and his family, especially this time that they are recovering from typhoon Ulysses where their residence in Montalban Rizal was submerged in floodwaters and they lost all their belongings. 

With this experience, Tipaklong is now engaging more Community Partners (CPs) to further broaden our customer base for our bicycle rental business and at the same time helping unemployed women or housewives like Rosemarie to earn additional income that will supplement their husband‚ meager income. Our deal with our community partners is simple: Tipaklong provides at least 10 bikes for the them to rent out to their neighbors at a very affordable rate of Php 15/hour (USD 30 cents). Tipaklong and the CPs split the revenues 70:30. If Tipaklong maintains the bikes, the split is 70:30, while if the CP maintains the bikes on their own, the split becomes 65:35. Edgar maintains his own fleet of bikes outside of work hours with Tipaklong and hence, the husband and wife team gets a better deal with Tipaklong at 65:35 revenue split. 

After our experience with Rosemarie, Tipaklong in coordination with Pledge Fund Lending Corporation (the founders micro finance company), marketed the Community Partner opportunity to its client base (which are mostly women) and in just 2 months, Tipaklong has increased its Community Partners to 11, eight of which are women. 

The bikes rented to the neighbors of our Community Partners are used for short trip errands and provides a cost-effective alternative to taking the tricycles (i.e. motorcycle taxis) which are powered mostly by the inefficient and pollutive 2-stroke motorcycles). The operation of these motorcycles contributes to significant carbon emissions as well as emissions of other pollutants. There are around 4.5M tricycles in the Philippines and 300,000 of this is in Metro Manila. Our bike rental services have the potential to replace the tricycle trips taken by commuters, especially in the low-income communities. 

Climate-Vulnerable Communities 

The Philippines ranks among the high-risk countries vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. The recent typhoons that battered the country in 2020 has exposed the vulnerabilities of low-income communities. Our bike rental and partnership with Community Partners will provide the affected population with uninterrupted mobility especially after these calamities when public transport and even private transport is oftentimes hindered due to damage in major infrastructures (felled trees and power lines, impassable roads, etc.) and also provide continuing livelihood to our Community Partners. Further, as we have seen in the past months, when public transport was suddenly halted because of the pandemic, people resorted to biking.

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