Little cedes 15pc amid slowdown

Taxi-hailing app Little has given up its 15 percent commission to reward its 50,000 drivers handling retail rides in Nairobi, Kisumu, Mombasa Eldoret and Nakuru.

Corporate communications head Joseph Christopher said this was aimed at encouraging drivers to respond to individual requests by Kenyans purchasing goods or moving from work to homes and vice versa.

“We have decided that in this time of reduced business activity, we will not be charging any commission to our drivers on their retail rides, so that they can keep all the revenue they make. We normally charge 15 per cent of the trip value as our commission but this has been forfeited to ensure that our driver earns a decent living,” he said.

Craft Silicon, who own the locally developed app now in use in Uganda, Tanzania and Ghana said they will provide hand sanitisers and antiseptic gloves to drivers in all regions they operate in.

“We are also delivering fresh oranges to our corporate clients as we believe oranges are rich in Vitamin C which enhances our body’s immunity to fight against coronavirus. We are also consulting with an epidemiologist to make sure our operations as a company is grounded in medical advice,” he said.

At the same time, Enterprise application software developer, SAP has opened access to its SAP Ariba Discovery solution for the next 90 days enabling buyers and more than four million suppliers in over 190 countries to transact securely.

SAP Africa global chief marketing officer Alicia Tillman said it had also opened travel management software TripIt that processes hundreds of thousands of travel itineraries for people around the world, monitoring flights and alerting them to any changes or delays.