Nearly 10 months after taking over the driver’s seat at Zemcar, CEO Juliette Kayyem said the ride-hailing startup is hitting the gas, with plans to expand and raise cash.
“This will be our first major back-to-school effort,” said the chief executive about this coming September.
But, the security expert cautioned that her company that’s focused on providing safe rides for kids is heading for "controlled growth."
So far, the three-year-old startup has raised about a million dollars in angel funding and has grown to employ 57 active drivers and generate a pool of 100 additional potential drivers in various stages of interview and screening.
And the company is steering towards a large fund-raiser likely to be completed this fall. Mostly for expansion, the funds would help the company quadruple its number of active drivers and to foray into two other East Coast markets by next year.
“The long term goal for the company is expanding in Boston and putting a footprint in East Coast states,” Kayyem said. “Whether it’s an institutional raise, family fund or strategic investment, we will need capital as we expand.”
She declined to say how much the company would seek from investors, but that it would be significantly more than the previous round of $1 million.
Zemcar considers itself to be different from Uber and Lyft in that it markets itself as a safe option for children, as well as potentially the elderly, and anyone else who is willing to pay a bit more for safety. Zemcar extensively screens drivers and has a patent-pending technology – which includes a “panic button” -- that helps give parents and caregivers peace of mind, said Kayyem, a mother of three children.
The company also touts itself as the first to have a live-streamed video from inside the car that can be seen on customers' phones, the only such startup in the state to have insurance to carry kids under age 18 alone, and a “three-way” ride-monitoring communication feed.
But the security comes at a cost. The price of insurance and employing drivers are major expenses, putting rides at a $15 minimum and at higher average rates than competitors. The pickups also factor in a 10-minute wait time for kids who might forget their backpack at school or lose track of time chatting with friends, she said.
“Our drivers are not allowed to abandon kids,” said Kayyem.
The price of a ride typically will cost $27 to $31, but Kayyem is betting most parents will find the extra dollars worthwhile because the rides will keep them from leaving work early, arriving late, or needing to hire a babysitter.
Providing a safety-focused ride service is also appealing to the drivers, she added, who are mostly women who might not feel comfortable letting anyone get in their car.
“Our motto is safe drivers, secure riders,” she said.
In addition to ramping up the business, the chief executive also said Zemcar is “in discussions with global companies” about the startup’s proprietary technology.
“We are pleasantly surprised by the global markets,” she said.
While declining to elaborate, the CEO did say the interest was mainly from Southeast Asia and Latin American.
Kayyem's other gigs have included working as a security analyst for CNN and as U.S. Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Intergovernmental Affairs under former President Barack Obama. She is also a Belfer Lecturer in International Security at Harvard Kennedy School, and frequently appears on news outlets discussing national security issues, as she was hours after this interview with BostInno on Wednesday.
Kayyem contends that part of Zemcar’s business strategy is to bring a sense of certainty to the uncertainty of what’s been dubbed the new “gig economy.”
“What I say to my team is… in a disrupted economy there is still a need for guardrails.”
