Social excursions platform Napiao has just received an angel investment of RMB5 million (approx: US$778,403) from Magic Stone Alternative Investments.
Napiao offers bus shuttle and attractions tickets in the Beijing area
Napiao is an app providing shuttle services to and from attractions. It was established in January 4 2015 by Beijing Jinmarong Technologies and was officially launched on July 15. Its service area covers the Beijing area where it has signed partnerships with one hundred attractions and has 200 buses serving 200 pickup points.
Its founder and CEO Wei Xu is a serial entrepreneur and former senior software engineer at US-based MWH and now heads a team of around 30 members at Napiao. The company's co-founder and CTO Xiaoding Bian is a Qinghua University graduate and former researcher at VMware’s China research center and Alibaba Mobile. Another co-founder and COO Xiaotong Li is also a Qinghua University graduate with many years' working experience in the media industry.
Napiao consolidates idling bus resources to offer good-value weekend bus shuttle services to attractions for different localities. It is capable of setting various pickup/drop off points in a single locality, making it possible for passengers to board within one kilometer of their homes.
Napiao is a service for both drivers and riders. Users log on to the Napiao app to search for the attractions they want to go to then they can book attractions tickets and a bus at the same time. Using cloud computing, the company also matches bus drivers with the most suitable routes and offers accurate bus schedule to facilitate bus drivers' service.
Napiao currently uses a bidding model to allocate routes among its bus drivers. It takes the difference between the bid price and the total bus fare as the fee for providing the data service, which is roughly 10% of the drivers' income from the service. Its current packaged products include only attractions with shuttle service but it plans to extend to dining and accommodation in the future to increase profit.(Translation by David)
