An e-hailing service for female passengers and schoolchildren only, Makcik Travels also provides chaperoned visits to hospitals and clinics, writes Balqis Lim
THE increase in criminal and sexual harassment cases involving e-hailing services lately make many women feel unsafe to use the services, especially when travelling alone and at night.
For this reason, a mother and daughter decided to initiate a travelling companionship service to overcome this predicament. They created MakCik Travels.
Dr Sazlina Kamaralzaman and her daughter Siti Sarah Anuar started the service last November at their home in Bangi, Selangor. Interestingly, all their drivers are Malaysian women and due to safety reasons, they only accept female passengers, senior citizens and schoolchildren.
Sarah, who will be graduating from Kolej Vokasional Kajang next month, says MakCik Travels initially offered a ride-sharing service on campus to bus stations, malls and nearby areas. When Dr Sazlina saw the potential, she created a poster to promote the service on her Facebook account.
The poster went viral and many women called up for the service. Due to high demand from the local community, Sazlina and Sarah registered a company and extended the service to Kuala Lumpur and other parts of Selangor. When they started the service, they only had 20 drivers on board, but now the number has increased to nearly 100.
MakCik Travels gets many requests from the elderly.
“Most customers want someone they can trust and are comfortable with, whether it’s for shopping, going to the clinic, hospital, dialysis centre and so on. We have received calls for sending and picking up dialysis patients who need someone to take them home safely after completing treatment.
“There are also parents who ask us to pick their children up from school as well as provide delivery services and midnight trips,” says Sazlina.
HOW IT WORKS
MakCik Travels offers two types of services: MakCik Drives and MakCik Chaperone. It has recruited agents to offer the same services in Taiping, Perak, Kota Baru and Johor Baru. The service will soon be available in Bukit Mertajam, Kuantan and Kota Kinabalu.
In order to use MakCik Drives, a customer just needs to contact through WhatsApp or its website (www.makciktravels.com) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/makciktravels).
The administration employees will then get the customer details and location. The staff will draft a quotation based on the request and if the customer agrees, the staff will proceed with finding a driver before sharing the companion ID and a picture of the driver’s car.
The fees, Sarah says, are competitive with other e-hailing services. However, the time the service is required matters; for example, if after midnight, the trip will be charged double.
Dr Sazlina, a lecturer at a public university, has 19 years of experience in teaching, community work and helping children with disabilities and special needs. Armed with a medical degree, her expertise is in rehabilitation. She has also worked with Permata Kurnia, the government’s first early intervention centre for children with autism.
“In rehabilitation, we provide services for the elderly and people with special needs, but the issue that we always face is accessibility. Most parents, when asked to bring their special needs kids to our centre, say that they are busy or have no transportation,” says Dr Sazlina.
Since MakCik Travels was introduced, they have been receiving requests for accompanying senior citizens and the disabled. Seeing the needs, it changed its e-hailing concept to travel companionship services.
“We introduced MakCik Chaperone in April, where our chaperones accompany customers to their location of choice. Whether a customer requires companionship at home or at the hospital, clinic or even to go shopping, a chaperone’s job is to make sure the customer will not be alone. She will assist the customer based on her needs.
“As chaperones, we also help elderly customers to collect their medicines at the clinic and listen to the doctor’s advice, so that we can explain it all to them afterwards.
“MakCik Drives is different as it involves only a driver or travel companion to pick a customer from one location to her destination of choice,” says Dr Sazlina, adding that the e-hailing service is offered 24 hours, seven days a week.
WOMEN EMPOWERMENT
According to Dr Sazlina, most of the profits go to the drivers.
“Business is one thing, but most importantly we want to help women generate income. That is why we started roping in agents. These agents act as administrators for the bookings and communicate with the customers and connects them with the drivers.”
MakCik Travels did its first agent training in June this year, and it involved five women from different cities.
Housewives, single mothers, students and working mums are encouraged to join as drivers. In terms of driver and companion selection, candidates are vetted through an interview process and filtered by specific criteria. Other requirements include a valid driving licence, a well-maintained car and technical skills on using gadgets, navigation apps and messaging platforms.
“However, we also share knowledge and train them so as to provide customer-friendly services.”
FUTURE PLANS
In February this year, MakCik Travels was given recognition by the London Examinations Board. The company was presented with a Silver Tulip Award for outstanding achievement in product and services.
MakCik Travels is developing a platform for agents to manage the services. Through the platform, agents will track driver location, income and reviews from customers.
When it comes to communicating with customers, Sazlina prefers Whatsapp as it has the “human touch” and conversations can be tracked easily.
“Even if we were to develop an app, we will make sure of a communication channel between our administration staff and customers,” she says.
FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS
MakCik Travels plans to introduce a new service called MakCik Explorer some time this year.
“These travel companions are Malaysian women living abroad. They will accompany women who are travelling to the country or city that they are living in.
“We will launch it first in Kota Kinabalu where a local will act as a guide, from teaching how to take public transport to sightseeing.”
In a mission to empower more women, Dr Sazlina plans to approach organisations to look at helping their members generate income through MakCik Travels.
“We want to conduct entrepreneurship courses for women with disability, single mothers, housewives and their families, who would like to generate own income by managing their own MakCik Travels service. This will create opportunities for these individuals to have a special role in the community.”