Metered Tuk Tuks in Sri Lanka - Opportunities & Threats (A SWOT Analysis)

Got the chance to have a chat with a tuk tuk driver from "Budget Taxi" company who had been with the service for a long time. Following is a brief situation analysis of such a company gathered from his words about the history and from what i learnt from customers of the service (Special thanks to Hasitha ayya - who shared his experience in using metered tuks) - The post is for the benefit of entrepreneurs in taxi business, for customers and business/marketing students like you and me to know.

Apparently the metered three wheel services had started about 3 years back. At that time which was only a differentiation factor from "badly looked upon" normal three wheelers. After that the "on call" tuk tuk companies started forming like Taxi services in the past Sri Lanka (There was a joke in a paper so many years back that if you dialled any pattern in a Sri Lankan phone - a taxi will come to you).


Strengths

• This company "Budget taxi" has build a very sustainable customer segment who travels daily. The driver said there are people who goes to office, travel during office hours, come home, go around for home needs all in the same tuk tuk. This is the biggest strength of the service as it protects the business,assures survival and creates growth specially by word of mouth marketing.
• Pricing model - is a big strength as it is a key factor when differentiating their service as compared below with the normal three wheel pricing mechanism (Bit of humour).

Weaknesses

• The current technology used to track tuk tuks is beneficial to the drivers side as he can switch off location tracking and go on private hires. This happened to me where i called the service & there was no tuk tuk but on the road i could find one who had switched off location tracking.
• No geographical presence is a weakness because you cannot find a taxi instantly. 

Opportunities

• Well seriously the economy is improving and the people are ready to spend on luxuries after the war. Living standards are increasing and thus people prefer to travel by tuks than in the past.  
• Technological advancements have enabled tuk tuks to have meters, have location tracking (Even manual tracking). But the advancements are great that companies can go for better technologies such as GPS tracking of tuk tuks. Even the customer end can be improved by better CRM systems such as an improved Taxico android app.

Threats 

• There are low cost cars like NANOs coming to the market, making travel by car less costly. And this can effect the appeal for tuk tuks. (Apparently NANO is only about Rs.10 more expensive).
• Threat of new entrance is very high. Already there are half a dozen tuk tuk services with the key word Budget, For e.g.Budget Lanka, Budget Three wheel.etc.
• Threat from the non-metered three wheels are very high as they are high in quantity and strong with their associations and influential networks.

Overall - It is a booming market as @vidic8d tweeted - NANO is already increasing their prices which means more profits for companies like Budget Taxi. On the other hand the market is becoming fragmented and it is tough to battle out.

Recommendations
It is recommended to move on to better technologies for tracking location and to come up with offices (Geographical service points) to fight normal three wheel services better.

Please feel free to comment below with your ideas and your points to be added to the SWOT. I will update the post with your name.