Philipp Mintchin, Co-founder and CEO
Splyt began in London in 2015 as a competitor to Uber, but following regulatory roadblocks, it pivoted to the B2B service it offers today.
Splyt has announced partnerships with some of Asia's largest and fastest-growing companies, such as Ctrip and Grab, in recent months. The latter also participated in Splyt's recent Series A funding of $8 million.
Splyt was founded about four years ago - what have been the company’s greatest milestones to date?
We started off completely different. We started off as an Uber competitor in London back in 2015 so the vision and milestones we set ourselves were different.
We had regulatory troubles with Transport for London and were forced to take a different path but fortunately we had great investors onboard who believed in the team more than the original product.
Fast-forwarding to today, we are the largest mobility marketplace in the world and our greatest milestones, I believe, are the partnerships we create and the team that exists at Splyt.
One thing we’re proud of is the mentality of not saying no and always going for the largest possible partnerships to work with. When we announced the partnership with Ctrip, which is I think the second largest online travel agency in the world according to revenue, we were a team of 15.
It was such an incredible feeling internally to be able to achieve something with such a small team, no public announcement of any funding round and basically being behind the radar.
I think our partnerships are our greatest milestone and achievement because it bonds the team closer together in providing us with the motivation and the energy to say you don’t need to be 100 or 200 people or be in Series “X” to be that middleware that connects the global mobility world. We’re extremely proud of that.
Would you say you are at a place now that you expected to be when Splyt started, further along or not there yet?
If we take a step back and look at it from when we officially pivoted into a mobility marketplace, I would say we are further ahead.
Looking at Alipay and Grab roaming, they were not planned for this year originally but we were able to convince these major brands to trust us in their global strategy.
Splyt recently announced funding from Grab as well as a deepening of the existing partnership. How does a company like Splyt get the attention of a company like Grab?
It’s not easy, and sometimes it takes several different attempts through different channels to get the attention of such a company.
Back in 2017 when we got an introduction to the original head of business development at Grab, Shawn Heng, he believed in the vision of expanding Grab’s operation through partnerships and breaking the operational barriers that exist in traditional ride-hailing where you're only available in X amount of countries.
He was our biggest advocate within Grab.
We had to jump through some hoops before we ever got to the conversation of investment. We had to prove our technology, we had to prove ourselves as a team.
We had to prove how seriously focused we are. One thing I believe every partner of ours would say is they admire our ability to stay focused.
We constantly receive interesting proposals to go left or right and create something new and enter this or that space but we want to get what we’re doing right because those large brands trust us with their global operations.
At Splyt we’re making sure we stay laser focused, a term I like to use from Grab, and that means providing the best technology out there, the best customer support, the best user experience, and we’re humbled that they use us and trust us.
Would Splyt ever diversify from ground transportation, and if so, in what direction, or would you say it will stick to what it knows?
Never say never. For now, we want to and are exploring through several conversations multimodality, two wheels and three wheels and also discussing public transportation.
Of course we are always speaking to as many people as possible and trying to understand what the demand will be going forward, but beyond ground transportation, probably at one point but there are so many things you can facilitate as a roaming middleware for global partners.
At the end of the day in order for Grab to be truly global they will need to be able to offer various services beyond ride-hailing, and of course we are in talks to see how Splyt can assist there but for the foreseeable future - and that’s shorter in a startup than a public company - we will focus on ground transportation.
There has been talk lately of whether platforms or super apps will win going forward. What’s your perspective?
I’m definitely seeing a trend of super apps. Super apps in Asia are nothing new, you have Alipay, Kakao, Grab, those are just three, there are many more.
It was such an incredible feeling internally to be able to achieve something with such a small team, no public announcement of any funding round and basically being behind the radar.
Philipp Mintchin - Splyt
And, you had the CTO of Uber just last week announce that it might open the app to third-party developers, which is basically saying that Uber at some point will become a super app, as we know them from Asia.
So, I definitely think they are an extremely convenient way forward for the end user.
If you have ever used Alipay or WeChat in China, it is extremely convenient to be able to do everything through one app, already linked to your payment method, and for many Chinese, it is today where they actually receive their salary too. It’s literally your whole life packaged within this one application.
Today, it’s like a supermarket where you have shelf space, your phone screen isn’t much different. Every app wants to make sure they are on that phone screen when you unlock your phone.
And, a super app manages to move from page five to page four to pages three to page two to page one especially when you have more frequency applications in there from ride-hailing to payments to chat, etc.
So, I definitely believe in super apps. We won’t get rid of platforms but at some point they will try and get into the super app space because at the end of the day, it’s all about frequency of usage, and you cannot compete with frequency of a super app.
What are the greatest challenges Splyt currently faces?
To scale while still being able to support our partners. Did we know we were going to have all these partners onboard today?
The reality is no, and we’re juggling to be able to support them in the way we have committed to and at the same time scaling and hiring new talent and making sure the knowledge transfer is done right and not losing focus of the deadlines that have been set by partners.
We need to do that across several time zones, and we’re just opening our office in Singapore two weeks and expect to have 15 people in the next two months over there.
Growing the head count, being able to support our partners while being able to supporting larger volumes, seeing impressive growth week on week.
We have a huge amount of partners in the pipeline so it is all coming. There’s no better motivation for a team than success, that lifts the spirit. We're realizing the vision we have is coming to life but it’s also about making sure we can execute across various time zones, continents and the multiple partners that rely on us.
The idea of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is gaining ground. What will it take for transport options to be truly integrated?
I believe it is a no-brainer going forward but believe in MaaS through partnerships and through existing brands. Waymo is offering its autonomous fleet to Lyft.
Masabi has partnered with Uber to provide public transportation in cities such as Denver, but also in London, you can now use a public transport feature within Uber.
I don’t believe we will see many new players that will take the user base away from Uber, Grab or Careem, but rather, we will see a shift within those apps that besides moving towards a super app, offering mobility as a service. That will be happening through partnerships.
Regionally speaking, a lot of these partnerships will be managed by themselves, but we hope to replicate that service as Splyt as middleware across the globe.
Grab has a trip planner now through their app which means they will offer various modes - one of them is two wheels. What we would want to do is offer them a variety of scooter companies across the globe whenever they travel. MaaS will be won over by the regional champions I believe, and we’ll facilitate that on a global scale.
In five to 10 years time, will consumers still own cars?
The trend is definitely going towards MaaS, towards autonomous. I’m a big fan of the autonomous future. I don’t think we know yet how it will look.
It also depends city to city on when this will roll out. I think the U.S. is a bit better suited because of the wider roads and the infrastructure in supporting autonomous, but if you think further and the likes of Rome or New Delhi, imagining a completely autonomous future there is extremely difficult.
The newer the city the easier it is to adapt to an autonomous future.
So, there will be car ownership but maybe it will look different. Look what Elon Musk is trying to do and even though you own the car, it will operate by itself in times you don’t use it and offer a ride-hailing service.
It’s difficult to say there will still be car ownership especially if you look at it on a global scale but it could differ from the way it looks today.
And, a few questions about you… how did you get the idea for Splyt as it is now?
When we were in pre-pivot stage we were selling a white-label solution to taxi companies across Europe.
One thing about the founding team is that we always had very global ambitions, and we included a roaming feature in those taxi apps, so if a Brussels user travels to Paris, etc.
We started talking to Careem and Cabify, and I remember my conversation with one of the co-founders at Careem, who looked at what we’d done.
Together we reached a conclusion that we should focus less on a front-end-type product and take a step back and focus on the middleware and build that out as a separate product.
So in January 2017, we took the decision internally to officially pivot into a global mobility marketplace purely as a B2B player. We contractually commit to our partners that we are not going to develop and run our own application.
Where do you see the next big innovation coming from in travel?
Travel as a whole is going to see a lot of innovation. There are tons of great startups. I was at RISE last week and you see a lot of startups trying to create new experiences in the travel sector.
For me the greatest innovation for me is the interconnection between the different verticals. The ability to book an adventure or an experience while at the same time being able to book a flight.
The merging into travel super apps is really exciting and I’m not sure if you’d call it big innovation.
Huge innovation would be Hyperloop but that’s probably a bit longer term.
Right now, if we focus on the user, the great thing today is being able use your Booking.com app, your Klook app or your Grab app to get access to various services through partnerships, not just owned services by these brands.
Has there been a time in your career where you could have taken a different path and things would be very different now?
Yes, on a daily basis. It doesn’t just apply to my career it applies to every human being. What if I had woken up half an hour earlier and walked right or left. The most important part is not to regret anything and stay true to the decision you have taken and motivate yourself to stick to this.
You can always contemplate about whether it was the right decision but that steals a lot of time and energy from you. I’m a big fan of execution rather than thinking of how it could have been different.
One of the things that sets Splyt apart is that we consider ourselves a very operational company, we always execute before we even take a moment to think.
It’s good and bad but the world is moving so fast and opportunities don’t stay there for a long time.
So you were not going to be an international footballer or a human rights lawyer?
Football is not my cup of team. My father always says the biggest benefit of an entrepreneur is that he or she doesn’t have any talents.
So, if I was excellent at playing the violin maybe that's what I’d be doing. So, by maybe by being mediocre at everything it means you need to hustle a little and try to achieve what you set yourself as a goal. I don’t regret anything.
I’ve been working since I was 13, delivering newspapers and selling phone contracts.
I have always been passionate about work and those that know me know I don’t differentiate between them.
For me, work is my hobby, I get a huge amount of pleasure out of coming to the office early, flying to a meeting, achieving something and through this motivating the team.
What’s the best thing about your role within the company?
Wearing multiple hats as well as flying the world and meeting different people.
As a B2B company we forge relationships around the world with various people across various cultures across various bands and that really gives you a different perspective on life.
It gives me that energy to continue running at 24/7.
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