Jemelyn Mae

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RutaCDO: A Navigation Solution for Cagayan de Oro City

Cagayan de Oro City, renowned for its bustling streets and vibrant culture, is a hub for both locals and tourists. However, navigating the city's complex network of jeepney routes is often challenging, particularly for tourists. RutaCDO, a social enterprise startup, addresses this issue by providing a mobile application designed to simplify public commuting. The app offers real-time tracking of public vehicles and suggested routes, significantly reducing the uncertainty of navigating jeepney routes and increasing convenience for users. By utilizing technology, RutaCDO bridges the gap between traditional commuting methods and modern digital solutions, making public transportation more accessible and efficient.

One of the standout features of RutaCDO is its ability to provide real-time updates on vehicle locations, ensuring that commuters have accurate and timely information. This functionality is particularly beneficial for tourists unfamiliar with the city jeepney system, as it eliminates the guesswork associated with finding the right routes. Moreover, the app suggests optimized paths based on the user’s starting point and destination, saving time and enhancing the overall commuting experience. RutaCDO’s user-friendly interface and focus on practicality make it an indispensable tool for navigating Cagayan de Oro's streets, particularly in a city where traditional navigation methods can be inconsistent or confusing.

Beyond convenience, RutaCDO embodies the spirit of innovation and social impact by addressing a real-world problem that affects daily life. Its vision extends beyond navigation, aiming to empower locals and visitors by promoting the use of public transportation as an efficient and sustainable option. This aligns with global efforts to reduce reliance on private vehicles and minimize traffic congestion. By fostering connectivity and ease of travel, RutaCDO not only enhances the commuting experience but also contributes to the city’s development as a modern, commuter-friendly urban center. Kay sa RutaCDO, giyahan ka sa saktong dalan!

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REVENUE MODEL FOR SOCIAL AND NON- SOCIAL ENTERPRISE

Every business's heart and goal is to satisfy customer needs while generating profit. Profits dictate a business's future, those with stable revenue streams can sustain operations and grow, while those without risk failure. As emphasized by Mr. Karl Dominic Fajardo in the lecture series, revenue models are the "blueprints" for generating income and achieving sustainability. They guide entrepreneurs in resource allocation, strategic decision-making, and long-term planning.

The discussion covered two types of enterprises: social and non-social. Social enterprises prioritize societal benefit over profit, often relying on donations, grants, or mission-driven product sales. In contrast, non-social enterprises aim for profitability, leveraging models like direct sales, subscriptions, and advertising. Choosing between these types depends on whether the goal is purely profit-driven or includes community impact.

For aspiring technopreneurs, selecting a revenue model aligned with customer preferences and business goals is critical. A well-crafted revenue model should include diversified streams, ideally three to four to mitigate risks and ensure stability during market shifts. Regular evaluations, conducted every three months, can help identify trends, understand customer engagement, and adjust strategies to maintain steady income.

As an insight from the lecture series,  understanding and implementing the right revenue model is essential for any business to achieve sustainability and growth. Whether pursuing a social enterprise to create community impact or a non-social enterprise to maximize profits, a well-planned revenue strategy ensures financial stability and aligns with the business's mission. By diversifying income streams, regularly reviewing market trends, and adapting to customer needs, businesses can thrive in an ever-changing market. Aspiring technopreneurs must embrace these principles to build successful and resilient ventures.

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The making of RutaCDO: Business Model Canvas

Businesses thrived and succeeded not because of what composed their team, their popularity, and their finances. They thrived and succeeded because of how they addressed their customers' needs and how they kept customers availing themselves of their products and services.

After we determined the customer jobs, pains, and gains, we formulated our VPC, which was a crucial part of establishing a basis for building the BMC, or Business Model Canvas. The Business Model Canvas was composed of nine key considerations, enabling us to assess if our business would serve its purpose, which was to satisfy our customers' needs.

From my interview with Mr. Yui, the pain of traffic was identified as a serious problem, but with RutaCDO, the easy location and access of alternative routes were identified to guide motorists toward less congested options. In our Business Model Canvas, we ensured that all commuters could benefit from the app, employing strategies to effectively reach our customers and gather their feedback to further improve the app’s performance. The overall success would not have been possible without our key partners and resources, who provided essential support in the app’s development and improvement.

As an insight into this activity, the Business Model Canvas (BMC) proved important for startups because it provided a comprehensive, clear structure that aligned every aspect of the business toward meeting customer needs. This underscored the reality that businesses succeed not merely due to their resources, team, or popularity but through their commitment to understanding and addressing what customers truly want. The BMC served as a roadmap, transforming this understanding into action, with its nine components designed to ensure the business delivered value effectively and sustainably.

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Technopreneurship: Value Proposition Canvas (VPC)

In the world of Technopreneurship, a Value Proposition Canvas is a helpful tool especially for startups to know the needs of the customer, so that they can align their product to them. During the customer interview, the following questions are asked:

What challenges do you currently face when commuting using jeepneys in CDO?

How do you usually find routes or directions for unfamiliar destinations?

What features would you find most useful in an app that helps you navigate jeepney routes in CDO?

How important is real-time information (like jeepney arrival times or traffic conditions) to you when using public transport?

What additional services or information (e.g., fare estimates, alternate routes) would you expect from a public transport app like Ruta CDO?

The interviewee’s response to each question:

What challenges do you currently face when commuting using jeepneys in CDO?

Answer: The common problems that are faced when using jeepneys are heavy traffic, leading to hassle commute for working people, and the loading period of jeepneys which adds to the commuting time of the commuters.

How do you usually find routes or directions for unfamiliar destinations?

Answer: With the use of GPS, finding routes is much easier.

What features would you find most useful in an app that helps you navigate jeepney routes in CDO?

Answer: It could be helpful if the app that is used by commuters can detect approaching vehicles.

How important is real-time information (like jeepney arrival times or traffic conditions) to you when using public transport?

Answer:  It can help commuters choose alternate routes for faster travel.

What additional services or information (e.g., fare estimates, alternate routes) would you expect from a public transport app like Ruta CDO?

Answer: It would be better if the app "location smart" or it could detect available public vehicles so that commuters could arrive at their desired location earlier.

Insight/s:

From this interview activity, commuters in Cagayan de Oro City face significant challenges related to heavy traffic and extended loading times when using jeepneys, making their commute more time-consuming and frustrating. While GPS helps in finding routes, there is a strong demand for real-time updates, including jeepney arrival times, vehicle detection, and traffic conditions. Commuters would benefit greatly from a public transport app like Ruta CDO if it offers features such as detecting approaching vehicles, providing real-time traffic information, and suggesting alternate routes. The inclusion of services like fare estimates and vehicle availability could enhance the overall commuting experience by enabling faster, more efficient travel.

The answers will be evaluated by us, the startup team, to prepare our product which is the Ruta CDO app to fulfill its purpose. This will help us to focus our objectives on what our customers really need. By understanding their pains, we can provide them with a solution that will give them benefits, and that benefit can be offered by our product.

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Technopreneurship: Design Thinking

The problems and tasks of today can be quite frustrating, but with technopreneurs, the hassles of manually doing anything can become faster and more efficient. As with this aspect, we have what we call ‘design thinking’, where we can freely think of an idea that matches and objectively resolves the needs of the target customers. For this interview, I asked my mother, Jessie, the interviewee, a series of questions like “What are the most common problems that you want to resolve?”, “Why did you choose it as a main problem for you?” and, “What can be the the long-term effect if your problem is resolved?”

As with these questions, she answered that the main issue she has to face always is health-related particularly when finding a prescribed medicine. I can relate to the struggle of finding medicine especially since not all pharmacies offer or sell a particular prescription. So I came up with a solution, an app, that could list down the available pharmacies, the nearest pharmacy within the radius of the user, and a list of available medicines that the pharmacy has. That way, she’d cut off the hassle of visiting different pharmacies to look up a particular med, and it would save her time so as not to worsen the health-related issues that she has. The app could also help other people who rashly need to purchase a particular drug during emergencies.

As a takeaway of design thinking, it is important that in designing a product, we have to understand the struggles of our customers, since we are building this product for their benefit and making their lives easier. If we put ourselves in their shoe, we could easily think of an idea of how we can ease their lives given a particular problem that we want to resolve. By incorporating modern solutions with the help of technology, anything, especially a problem, can be resolved with the ideas and the geniuses of Technopreneurship.