Entrepreneur develops app for towing services

One rainy night, Nassir Ali (pictured), an IT professional, was travelling with a friend when their vehicle broke down.

They had to wait for hours and make numerous calls in order to get towing services. The breakdown operators who later showed up turned out to be rogue, leading to a nasty ordeal before their vehicle was eventually towed.

Having previously worked for insurance companies, Ali had also observed the inefficiencies when the clients' vehicles got into accidents and they needed towing services.

These experiences saw the entrepreneur, who runs Complete Tech Limited, develop a mobile application dubbed Dr Tow that will soon be available on Android and iOS.

“When I was working in insurance, I noted the demand for towing services, owing to accidents or vehicles breaking down on the road. However, there were constant reports of vehicles being mishandled, parts being stolen and clients being extorted,” he told Enterprise.

Dr Tow, set to go live next month, operates like an Uber for towing vehicles and individuals can request for a flatbed or breakdown.

It expects to streamline the towing sector by doing background checks on operators onboarded on the platform.

“Operators go through a probation period, where we do the checks, including checking police clearance certificates, vehicle details, tax payments and their areas of residence,” said Ali.

“Once satisfied that we are dealing with genuine people, we give them the green light to operate on our app.”

The app also sets the standard price by charging in terms of the kilometres towed and removes any room for extortion.

Vehicle owners are also able to monitor the towing journey from their phones.

It will work with insurance companies and individuals can also request the services.

They hope to integrate systems with the insurance companies to allow for seamless services.

This will see individuals who request through the insurances allocated the nearest operator and their vehicles towed with the bills footed by the insurer.

At the moment, the app will operate in Nairobi, Limuru, Nakuru and Eldoret.

Ali says they will soon scale to work with car dealers to transport vehicles to clients among other transport activities.