Airbike grasps the handles of business

Dockless bike sharing is taking off in Australia but not without some hiccups, prompting two entrepreneurs to enter the fold with their take on the cheap and easy form of urban transport.

It’s Australia’s first dockless bike-sharing company and it’s just launched to compete against the giants.

it's an unlikely duo - Angus McDonald, 21, teamed up with serial entrepreneur Terry Collins, 65, matching youthful enthusiasm with investment experience looking to solve a problem.

Terry Collins is the technical director of airbikes, overseeing app development, logistics and security. Source: Supplied

“The problem is Australia has a terrible transport system, and even just getting to uni from where I live, which isn’t even that far, will take me around one hour,” Angus said.

With an initial outlay of 50 bikes, the business has just launched their product at the University of Sydney.

“Airbike has managed to get a partnership with the university where this sort of dockless bike-sharing system can be tested with the university,” Entrepreneurship Programs manager Jared Harrison said.

Angus McDonald speaks with Jared Harrison about the role the university's business program played in their launch. Source: Supplied

Knowing that they’re targeting a young market in flat areas with high foot-traffic helped them adjust user-experience.

In order to access a bike, users download an app which is used to scan a QR code. That then unlocks the bike and charges an associated account a rate of $1.30 per half-hour or for a single use.

And although they’re looking to expand, the pair is happy to start small, with a focus on usability and embedded technology.

“The software was incredibly complex to develop so we want to make sure we get it right before we go to the full masses,” Angus said.

Yet there has been an expected challenge: trying to mitigate loss and damage to assets.

The business is prepared for the costs of retrieving dumped bikes from waterways or public areas. (Picture: Filmmaker Tommy Jackett) Source: Filmmaker Tommy Jackett

“You can’t stop this from happening 100 per cent – you can only reduce it so we’ll probably lose around 5 per cent of our bikes,” Terry said.

He and Angus said they understand it’s a very high-risk venture.

“The problem with this system is educating the public on how to use it,” Angus added.

They’ve built technology into their bikes and put an anti-theft feature on their product to reduce risks.

“All bikes are geotracked so you can see it through our app,” he said.

Scanning the QR code with the app will unlock the bike. Source: Supplied

“It sends a heartbeat every five minutes to say, ‘I’m here’, to the server and it responds saying, ‘OK, can you give me a location?’ and it’ll ask the GPS hardware in the lock to give it the latest coordinates, which is uploaded to the server.”

They’ve also developed a rewards system to incentivise users to relocate bikes to a central location and organise a courtesy car to collect bikes if it’s unused for too long.

For now, the team is relying heavily on word of mouth to get noticed with another 400 bikes to hit the pavement by Christmas.

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