Ms. Samrawit Fikru

#Enterpreneures_profile: Samrawit Fikru

Samrawit Fikru was born in Assela. Her father who knew she was going to run a secret race want her to be a good student. Until the age of 17, Samrawit had never seen or heard about computers. she came to Addis Ababa with her brother for the first time and was introduced to computers. 

Then Samrawit's begins her programming journey and started two different projects in her company called Hybrid Designs but these projects are failed and started her third project it is now called Ride. Ride become one of the successful and pioneer tech businesses in Ethiopia.

Samrawit is a woman, a leader, a business, and a technology person.

The journey of Ride began when she realized she did not feel safe getting into a taxi with a driver she did not know.

At the age of 22, having identified the gap in the market, she took $2,000 of her savings and started Hybrid Design, a software, and applications developing company. Shortly after, the company introduced RIDE, a transport and booking platform in Ethiopia that is phone-based just like Uber. RIDE started as an SMS-focused request in 2014. As with many startups, there was little to no profit for those first two years. By 2017, understanding the need for a revamp, she single-handedly relaunched RIDE where users either use an app downloaded to their smartphone or call into a call center to schedule a ride 24 hours a day, 7 days a week including holidays. To get a RIDE, users now only have to dial 8294 (or TAXI on a keypad) or download the RIDE app from anywhere within Addis Ababa to use the service.

RIDE is now used by tens of thousands of users and has had 50,000 downloads on just the Google Play Store. Like Uber, the app provides the driver’s picture, vehicle license plate, side numbers, and brief information on the driver. RIDE also does not charge surge pricing during popular times of the day and amazingly 90% of its staff are women, this is an industry dominated by men.

The launch of RIDE could not have come at a better time. The general opinion is that Prime Minister Ahmed will want to begin removing the traditional blue taxis that have been plying the streets of cities across the country for as long as 60 years with newer, more fuel-efficient taxis. As a result of extremely high tariffs, Ethiopia has one of the world’s lowest rates of car ownership, and people rely on car-ride services to a great extent for their transportation needs. This offers a great opportunity for RIDE to make an impact.

Ironically some of the same taxi drivers who used to charge her double to get home are now working for her!

The sky is the limit for RIDE! In November 2019, Samrawit met Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey who later Tweeted a photo of the two of them and tagged Elon Musk saying “She’d love to introduce Tesla to Ethiopia!”

@EthiopianBusinessDaily