Bluebird - Classic Story of an Outdated Business

 
Earlier today a total of 500 bluebird taxi (largest taxi in Indonesia) did a strike in Jakarta, their complain: taxi drivers' income decreased by whole lot because of tough competition from Uber and Grab Taxi. There is no surprise that their income is decreased but they demand to ban Uber and Grab from streets in Indonesia.Not just for living things, the concept survival of the fittest applies as well to business.

We have witnessed plenty of similar stories before, one of the most recent story is Nokia and Blackberry. Their failure to adapt and innovate to follow the business trend causing them to lose their market share, income, and most likely to fail.

Here is the problem with Bluebird taxi: Even though they are not the only taxi provider in Indonesia, they monopolized the market for a long time due to lack of competition. There are two issues I would like to point out here:

1. Competition is good for consumer. I am a believer of free market, I believe that government at this point should not intervene by banning online taxis from operating. These online taxis are healthy for the taxi market as consumer now have more competing business to serve the market. With the competition so far, we can see the trend that if regular taxi does not innovate or have changing strategy, it will be hard for them to survive. Only the one preferred by customers going to survive, just like iPhone and Samsung over Nokia and Blackberry.
2. Innovation is required for regular taxi especially Bluebird to survive. There are several ways for them to adapt, and one of the way is redefining their pricing scheme. Price war might not be inevitable to survive in the market. 

My only suggestion for government is not to intervene so that regular taxi and online taxi is going to adapt to better serve customers. For regular taxi especially Bluebird, there are two options: to adapt or to suffer.



photo credit:
http://mobilinanews.com/post/blue-bird-vs-uber-taxi-mana-yang-menguntungkan/