“After Innosight, I moved to Kenya to help start up a waste management company that focused on providing affordable and reliable waste collection services in low-income communities. We developed a business model that allowed us to keep collection prices low by creating a system of composting and recycling and reselling up-cycled products. By the time I left my role as Chief Operations Officer, we were conducting twice-weekly waste collection for over 3,000 households with the help of over 30 local staff.
Currently, I’m the Managing Director for a company called Easy Taxi-a mobile app that helps connects drivers and passengers in a safe, convenient, and reliable manner. Since our launch last year, we have become Nairobi’s #1 downloaded taxi app with thousands of users each month and hundreds of partner taxi drivers. The most rewarding part of this job has been the impact we’ve had on the existing taxi driver community. Our partner taxi drivers are making 30-100% more revenues each month, feel much safer when picking up passengers late at night, and we’ve gotten great feedback from our passengers as well.
Check out the Wall Street Journal’s coverage of Peng and Easy Taxi.
My time working at Innosight helped prepare me as an entrepreneur. All the concepts that we worked on with clients, particularly around iterative testing and learning and overcoming customer barriers, are extremely relevant in emerging markets. At Easy Taxi, we are operating in a very fast-moving environment that requires daily adjustments to the business model. Only by having a clear idea of what worked, what didn’t, and why, are we able to make smart moves fast.”