After a long era of taxi-sharing and cab rental apps, it is time for rented bikes. These mobile app-based bike rental services have become an easy mode of travel, alone or on a sharing basis, without the need for hailing a taxi or a cab. These newly introduced convenient bikes have been catching the attention of people all around the major cities, especially the Millenials.
Why Bike Rental mobile apps?
App-based bike rental services is a new concept, which has been popularized within a short span of time. The benefits include:
Convenient
Time-saving
Cheaper mode of transport
App and IoT based
No human intervention
Dockless
How to Develop a Bike Rental Mobile App?
The bike rental mobile app basically has 3 parts to it, namely:
Customers app
Admin app
Towing & Roadside Assistance app
Bike rental services like VOGO or Bounceshare are mobile app-based services, which the customers need to use in order to locate the bikes and rent them.
Features of Customer mobile app:
Ease of traceability
One of the important features that the bike rental mobile apps should include, is the ease of traceability. After the users have downloaded and installed the app on their mobile, the first feature that they need to use is tracing the rental bikes near them. The location of the bikes present in the vicinity will be shown in the app. Hence, easy availability needs to be taken care of. In case there are no bikes available nearby, the users can make bike request so that the bike rental agencies can ride the bike to the user’s locations and hand it over to them.
QR code scanner
The mobile app needs to have a QR code scanner. This is because, the bikes can only be unlocked by scanning the QR code on the bike, using the scanner in the app. This makes it really easy to unlock and hop onto the bike, without much hassle in unlocking.
Advance booking option
This important feature works exactly like a cab booking. Users can book their bikes in advance in order to ensure that they get the bikes at the time they need. Advanced booking ensures that users can get bikes even at rush hour when the availability is scarce.
Live Tracking
Tracking rental bikes in real-time is important. This is because the bikes need to be traced in Live, as the users all over the city travel using the bikes. Moreover, when the bikes are not in use, their position needs to be traced such that the bikes are not stolen or used for any anti-social activities.
Multiple payment options
Integration of multiple payment options needs to be done, such that the users can pay using their choice of payment mode. This helps in making the app more user-friendly and convenient. While integrating various payment options, the security needs to be considered as well.
Trip details
This feature helps with the details of each trip taken by each of the bike rental users. This helps the company to keep a track of all the bikes and the rides taken up by each user. This offers a complete record-keeping for the customers as well, about the trips taken by them and the distance traveled.
Bike locking after trip ends
Once the trip is completed, the user receives an OTP, using which they can lock the bike at the end of the trip. If the users fail to lock the bike at the end of the trip, it continues charging the customer, as if the trip has not ended. This feature ensures that the bikes are safely locked before they are left by the users.
One-touch customer support
Efficient customer support needs to be provided to the users in case of any issue faced while riding the rented bikes or while booking. One-touch customer support ensures the popularity of bike rental services across the world.
Distance and Time calculator
This feature helps the users to calculate and keep track of the distance traveled as well as the rental charges that he needs to pay for the usage. Once the trip ends, he can view the time and distance calculation and pay the specified amount, using one of the payment options offered by the app.
Offers and promos
Discounts and offers are always welcomed by customers all over the world. This feature lists all the discounts and offers that the users are eligible for. Push notifications can be sent to the customers, communicating them the offers they are given. This, in turn, encourages them to use bike rental services even more.
Features of Towing & Roadside Assistance app:
Towing Assistant plays a key role in bike rental apps like VOGO or Bounceshare.
Live to track
One of the key features of the Roadside assistant app is live tracking. The technician can track down all rental bikes in the vicinity and keep track of them. Moreover, with accurate real-time tracking, the Towing assistant can also deliver the bikes, when requested by a user. These rental bikes need to be delivered to the user’s location if adequate bikes are unavailable at the location where the user needs.
Details of all the riders
The roadside assistance app should include the feature of having the details of all the riders. This is because Towing assistant needs to pick up, drop and repair the bikes on the go along with maintaining a consolidated record to which user used which bike, for what distance and between which destinations. This feature is important in order to prevent any criminal activities using the rented bike. In cases of some unwanted incidents involving the rental bikes and users, the culprit could be tracked easily by the details maintained by the Towing agent.
Features of admin panel:
Dashboard
The admin dashboard keeps a complete track of the business, along with details of all the bikes, the agents as well as the customers using them. Details statistics of the usage of the bike, the miles traveled by each bike are kept as a record. This ensures complete transparency of the business and admin can monitor and track all bikes. Moreover, the area in which the bike rental services are most popular can also be tracked down easily.
Real time tracking
Real-time tracking of the bikes when they are in use as well as when they are idle is important to know the location and position of the bikes. This ensures the protection of the assets of the bike rental company, without lost or stolen bikes being reported.
Unlike the app-based cabs like Uber, bike rentals are much cheaper and the revenue is generated through the charges paid by the users to ride the bike. Since the role of drivers is eliminated, hence the companies can enjoy the full profit, unlike in cabs where the drivers are given a large amount of the profits. The charges taken from the customers are nominal and as low as Rs 5/km for 12 hours. This encourages many people to use these bikes and hence offers a good amount of profit for the companies.
How much does it cost to build a bike rental mobile app?
The cost of developing a bike rental mobile app ranges from $10K to $25K for a single (Android/iOS) platform. This price varies widely with the addition of various features. Development of the app in various other platforms will increase the development cost.
Mobile app with the basic features like VOGO or Bounceshare will cost much lesser than the ones with advanced features.
Operating system
Development of mobile apps in iOS is much costly than Android. Hence, if you decide to develop an Android app, the cost of development will be lesser.
Resources
The hiring of dedicated resources is essential for the development of bike rental apps. Getting the right team with members who can contribute effectively has a major role to play in making the bike rental app development successful. The team structure is as follows:
Required team structure
Project Manager
2-3 iOS/Android developers
1-2 Backend developers
UI and UX designer
QA tester
In case of development of a basic app with only the must-have features, the cost of development will range around $10k-$12k. However, with the addition of advanced features, more team members will be needed, making the development cost soar up to $25k.
The marketing strategy
Bike rental services in India is new and hence a good marketing strategy is needed. The USP of this business is a dockless scooter, which can be picked up from anywhere and dropped anywhere after use. This is super convenient for people, especially millennials who are always on the move, looking for cheaper modes of transport, always in a hurry and accompanied with friends.
Read more: How much does it cost to develop a mobile app?
With the bike rental business growing, people do not have to wait for app-based cabs to arrive. They can simply use the apps to unlock a bike and move around in the city, with their friends. The total charges can be shared among the friends and they can actually choose with whom to travel, unlike app-based cabs, where they have no choice to choose their co-passengers.
The rental bikes have created a massive revolution. These bikes are used widely in metro cities like Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai and are now spreading in smaller cities as well. The convenience and cheapest mode of transportation itself works as the marketing strategies, helping app-based bike rental services to grow.
Nextbrain Technologies offer you a complete bike rental mobile app development solution to Start your bike rental business with ease. We ensure an easy to use and feature-loaded app that attracts a huge customer base and gives your business a kickstart.
Saran
September 15, 2020 Author