Cycling enthusiasts and service providers will finally be able to connect with one another thanks to the hubtiger (www.hubtiger.co.za) platform and app launching soon.
Developed for cyclists who love their bikes, hubtiger enhances their experience by connecting them with data, information, and service providers instantly in a user-friendly manner.
“We have a long-term vision for hubtiger but initially are focusing on the bicycle and the cyclist,” says Stuart Blyth, co-founder of hubtiger. “Cyclists love their bicycles, so we want to help them look after it. The hubtiger mobile app starts with the bike, providing service indications per component based on service history and usage.
“And, because of the numerous incidents we always read or hear about, we developed a crowd-sourced incidents map, which will show things like bike-jackings, theft, accidents, and any close calls. Our aim with this [map] is to help show places where cyclists need to be cautious for their own safety.”
The app launches this month and there is an exciting roadmap planned with innovative features like race analytics, weather, and more coming soon. Initially, hubtiger will connect cyclists to bike shops but there are plans to incorporate other services providers soon.
The bicycle shop solution, which is Web-based and free for the shop, aims to help drive great customer experience with numerous features. This includes workflow and automated communications to cyclists as their bikes progress through the workshop. It also provides analytics on components and highlights service requirements according to the unique setups of the customers’ bicycles.
Finally, the workshop can access the full-service history of the bike to quickly identify areas that need attention. From a community perspective, services at bike shops can be rated to enable customers to identify the ones that best suit their requirements.
“The cycling community is an incredibly tech-savvy one. Cyclists have all sorts of wearable devices to analyse their rides, performance, and body reactions. The hubtiger platform combines these data streams into a unified solution that incorporates real-time analytics in a user-friendly environment.”
One of the most exciting aspects of hubtiger is that it will be shaped according to feedback provided by the user community. This means everybody involved in cycling will be able to join the platform on an exciting journey as users will have the power to inform the developers which features and capabilities they need on the app.
“We want to have a platform that factors in the needs of cyclists and service providers to continually evolve as their needs change. While we are initially rolling it out exclusively to South Africa, there are plans to expand hubtiger into the global market,” Blyth adds.