Kevin Govender — The Rise Of The Sharing Economy

And once again, it is what's involved. So good to have you along with us. So all things being equal, this is actually going to be the last show of 2021. I almost said 2019 shows you are far out of time and touch we've been. And I thought, let's do something amazing and interesting. Let's try and share some good news. So joining me at this time, I like to say a very warm welcome to you, Kevin, Governor, how are you? Good morning, David. I'm very well, thank you. And thank you for having me on your show. It's an absolute pleasure. Now we're gonna, we're gonna be chatting about your book that has just come out called The Rise of the Sharing Economy, which sounds fascinating. And I want to get into that. But before we do, talk to me a little bit about Kevin, give me a bit of your background, and where you are now. Because when I had a look at your resume, I was amazed. I'm like, where do you find time to write a book? So talk to me about that. No, thank you, David. So as I mentioned, my name is Kevin Gavender, born in Durban. I've been living in Johannesburg for the last 20 years. I'm a director partner at Deloitte Africa. I end up ERP for Deloitte Africa. And I also was responsible for the CIO program for the last three and a half years. I'm married to Natalie. And I have two children, a daughter, six years old, Kimisha, and a son, Kian, who's three years old. I live in, I live in River Club in Sentin. And yeah, that's, that's me in a nutshell. I've been working for the last 25 years in various companies, spent 15 years of my life in private sector and 10 years in management consulting. So with my 25 years experience, I've worked both locally and across Africa and globally. I've worked across many, many industries in consulting turnaround strategies. I'm an industrial engineer by qualification at my first qualification. And I did my honors and master's honors through UCT Business School and my master's at Wits Business School. And interestingly enough, the book that we're going to talk about is actually based on my master's that I did through Wits Business School.

I was actually part of the PhD class. And I wrote my dissertation, which was a master's by management on the sharing economy. And I actually had some groundbreaking research because I actually got the golden key award for making a theoretical contribution to the body of knowledge based on the research, which is part of the first research across Africa. Okay, wonderful stuff. Now, I need to move on because you've got over this, but I mean, you've certainly done your time. And you talk about getting your master's, which is also something that's not easy. You have a family. Why did you decide to write this book, The Rise of the Sharing Economy? Because I think I know what it is, but why is it important? So I think the first thing, why did I write the book? When I started doing The Desert, my master's, I thought about this topic. And firstly, it was very new to me and it was something that was unique. Lots of people didn't understand what it is. And I thought, what a great topic to do research on. It'll be something pioneering in Africa. And that was the main reason. And I think the reason I wrote the book, because it was either writing a few peer-to-peer papers, peer review papers and getting a PhD, or alternatively writing the book. And I decided, you know what? I think there's a lot of great insights in the sharing economy and the advantage it could bring to people in Africa. So that was the main reason for writing the book. I mean, you ask the question, what is the sharing economy? And the sharing economy is defined as a set of practices and economic models that through technology and community allows individuals and organizations to share access to products, services, and experience.

And to make that in simple terms, it is the whole premise is that access is the new ownership. You do not have to own something to experience it. It's not about owning, it's about, for example, a drug. You do not need a drug, you need a hole. It's only when you need the hole, do you need the drug? So that's the whole premise. And the fact is there's so much of burdens of ownership

on the property rights theory and what you're accountable and responsible to. People are saying, "I'm tired of that." And if you look at from a sustainability perspective, there's an environmentally friendly perspective. There's quite a bit of opportunity to get access to services and products at a cheaper cost and also be cost conscious as well as environmentally conscious. Okay. Off the bat, this sounds like a concept that is tailor-made for South Africa and for Africa. Now, I'm still not sure, despite having all of this information in front of me here, how we would do it. I mean, I can see it would be disruptive, but can you give me an example of the sharing economy in action? So let me give you the two common ones that everybody is aware of and then I'll bring it home. So if you look at Uber, Uber is a platform, so is Airbnb, where people actually embark on or engage in ride sharing or car sharing. Now, in the Uber option, you register on a platform and when you need a ride from point A to point B, instead of using your own car, or if you don't have a car, you can use the ride sharing capability. The same thing with Airbnb. With Airbnb, you do not have to own a property at the beach or in a place where you need to do a vacation. You have access to properties that are sitting on the Airbnb platform and for a certain fee, you are able to have access to these properties depending on the timeframe that you would like to use it. And the one advantage of this is that you don't have to worry about insuring the car or insuring the property, maintaining the car or maintaining the property and all those other burdens that come with audition. So that's one example. But let's take an example in South Africa, for example. If you look at Swift South, Ashwapando created a platform. It's based on the platform for domestic worker sharing in South Africa. And what it does, what that platform has done is done a few things. Firstly, it's provided a platform for domestic workers to register, to be able to get a fair working salary or remuneration for the type of work they do. But also, there's elements of protection of domestic workers where sometimes they are not treated well by the people using them. And if you look at the two-way rating system that has been created, it gives an opportunity for both the domestic worker to be able to rate what was their experience working for a particular family or resident.

And the same thing, it gives the resident an opportunity to... So it's a two-way rating, similar to Uber or Airbnb, where you rate the host versus the person living, coming and using

your car or driving your car, ride with its ride sharing or car sharing, and in the Airbnb. So those are some of the examples. And I think if I look at the high unemployment rate in South Africa, it is based on the fact that we have lots of entrepreneurs, but it's very difficult for people to become entrepreneurs in South Africa because you need access to capital, you need collateral. So by having an asset that is unutilized, you could actually register this asset on one of the platforms and you can start generating additional income, like Airbnb. Or you could take your car, you could be working during the day and during the evenings, you could decide that I'm registering with whether it's Uber, there's new other companies out here, there's Bolt, which used to be Taxify, was bought over by Bolt, there's Didi, there's all these different ride sharing and car sharing schemes in South Africa. And the same thing with accommodation, there's such a huge shortage of student accommodation across the nine provinces. You could decide that you need extra income and you can register your spare room or your outbuilding on Airbnb. And you could actually host students. And remember, you can also have long-term rentals and you can provide value-added services like ironing their clothes. And by the way, David, you know what the interesting thing is, some people out there are actually using Airbnb as a means of actually keeping their houses because affordability is an issue and they need to, they actually need to bring in this extra income through Airbnb to be able to afford the current residence.

You know, that is incredible, Kevin. And I'm interested that you mentioned SweepSouth because SweepSouth has revolutionized my life because we're able to get in a helper when we need a helper. They get to sort of come in, work for X amount of hours and they get to decide whether they want to work with us, which was brilliant when I found that out because it's easy for you to turn around and go, "Oh, I didn't like so-and-so," but then if they're saying, "Listen, David hasn't been the best employer around," then we're going to know about it. So that's fantastic. Listen, we need to talk more and I want to talk more about the entrepreneurship side of things. We'll do that when we come back. This is what's involved. My special guest is Kevin Govender, author of The Rise of the Sharing Economy, back in just a bit. And we're back. It is what's involved, my guest, Kevin Govender. We're talking The Rise of the Sharing Economy. Now, just before the break, Kevin, we were talking about some of the examples, which I totally understand, but let's talk a bit about entrepreneurship now. You know, we've heard so much and it depends who you listen on or listen to that we're either on the verge of the fourth industrial revolution. We're right in the middle of the fourth industrial revolution, or we've passed that and we're moving on to the fifth. It doesn't matter how we label it. What matters is things are changing and we're moving past this time where we're looking for lots of blue-collar workers. As I understand it, our economy is soon to become more knowledge-based.

So how does entrepreneurship fit into this model of a sharing economy?

Thanks, David. I mean, before I answer that, I think that maybe there's two facts I'd like to mention. In 2011, the sharing economy was due by Time magazine as one of the 10 ideas that will change the world. And it was widely hailed as a major growth sector by sources ranging from the Fortune magazine to the World Economic Forum and to former President Obama. The total value of the global economy is estimated to grow from 14 billion in 2014 to 335 billion US dollars by 2025. Now, just listening to that 335 billion US dollars by 2025, that tells you, and this is only across five sectors. So you can imagine the opportunity that it provides. Now, when I talk about entrepreneurship, because remember we're talking about assets that are unutilized. For example, David, your car is only utilized 8% of the time. 92% of your time, your car is parked either at work or in the garage at night when you're sleeping. So imagine if you decide and you are not a person that's very close to your car and you are comfortable with somebody else driving it. You could make your car available to other people and you can start generating income. Or you could decide to, as I mentioned, put it on to the... Log it on to Deedee, Bolt, Uber, any of these platforms that are available in South Africa and you can generate new income. But when we talk about entrepreneurship, for example, I'd like to bring it down to the...

Rather than talking entrepreneurship, I want to talk about micro-entrepreneurship. Because what micro-entrepreneurship says, the barrier of entry to become an entrepreneur is much more easier than an entrepreneur. Because as you know, with an entrepreneur, you need to register a company, you need to make sure you've got collateral, you've got funding, whether it's VC funding, venture capital funding, and to be able to start this business. But as a micro-entrepreneur, you could just take an asset very, very quickly, which is underutilized and you can use the existing platforms and become a micro-entrepreneur and start generating income. And that is what we're hoping that this will be able to help the grassroots people in South Africa. Another good example of... If you look in South Africa, we have a lot of land, agricultural land and farming land. But a lot of people do not have access to farming equipment and tractors that is required to farm. Now, to give you a quick example,

a one acre of land, which is approximately 10,000 square meters, it takes 21 days if you have to plow that land manually. But if you had a tractor, it would take you eight hours, so you would save 20 days. Now, you can imagine there is a company called Hello Tractor, which is based on the Uber concept. They are Uber for tractors. They have created a company called Hello Tractor and it's predominantly in Nigeria. They have brought and unutilized assets of tractors onto the Hello Tractor platform and farmers who do not have access to this or access to capital to buy their own can actually go and use this for the day or a week. And that is something I think would be very relevant in South Africa. Absolutely. I mean, as you were saying it now, I was thinking to myself, that's the answer. Why hasn't somebody done it yet here in South Africa? So there is a company that has done it, but I don't think it's well known firstly. And secondly, I think there's a company called AXL that's deployed the similar concept of tractor. Because remember, it's all of these, it's linked again to the burdens of tractor ownership, the payment of insurance, installments, maintenance, and the advantage and the benefit this brings to all of us is firstly convenience. It's available when you need it.

It's cheaper, it's more affordable and you pay per use. So it's like a subscription base. It's limited or no exposure to burdens of ownership. And that is what needs to be done. And if you look at, for example, let's look at the other challenge we have in South Africa. We're having major water shortages and water problems. We also are having electricity load sharing. Now, if you look at solar sharing, solar sharing, if you're living in an estate, why would you need to each person put your own solar? Why can't you create a common solar system and it be shared? The same thing applies to water boreholes. I was just speaking to a colleague of mine. I attended a book club on Sunday and she was telling me she lives in an area where around the area, there's about 20 odd people have decided to put boreholes and each person had to do it on their own. And some of them had to break down walls because you got to get these big trucks in to come and dig this wall. But she thought, she said, but you know, if people thought about it, they could have found common land, built it, and then did the reticulation and the water and connected it to various houses and the huge cost of it, because it's between 100 and 150,000 brand to dig a ball and do all the connections. So there's a lot of opportunity for this and for people to start new businesses. But there's another thing that I think it's important to note as well.

The shared economy, firstly, is known by various names. We talk about collaborative consumption. We talk about the platform economy. We talk about the on-demand economy, the gig economy, the peer-to-peer economy, the trust economy, excess consumption, and the sharing economy. So, you know, I'm sure you just baffled now. There's so many names they know and also the circular economy. So the whole question is, the world has changed, COVID has really impacted the world. We're talking about working any place, any time. You don't have to be anywhere. And there's been companies like TaskRabbit, Fiverr, that have been created many years ago that actually helps with freelance skills. And if you look at the great resignation that's happened predominantly in the U.K., Germany, starting to happen in South Africa, where there was, I think they talk about plus minus 4 million people quit their jobs in America alone, where they realized they don't have to be working for one company. They could actually start freelancing and work from wherever and do whatever they love. And it's all about flexibility. If you look at the whole premise of the great resignation, it's based on flexibility that work when you want to work, work from where you want to work and do the jobs that you are passionate and want to do. So there's a lot of this. And that is another way to show your skills because you don't have to work in South Africa anymore. If you're unemployed and you're betting to get a job in South Africa, you could sell your services to anywhere in the world, as long as you're willing to fit in into the timeline and the time zone and work and lots of people are comfortable with people working remotely. So that is where the world is changing. And then if you look, I mean, we can talk about and just stop me when you want to, but I'd like to bring in the impact of COVID. Kevin, let's do that. When we come back, let's get into COVID because COVID, as we said right in the beginning, I don't think it's going anywhere.

You've got to take on that. So when we come back, let's have a chat about the impact of COVID in our economy and in the world in general. My special guest is Kevin Govender. We're talking about the rise of the sharing economy. And as we are talking, this is making more and more sense to me. I'm understanding a whole lot more. Back with Kevin in just a bit. And we're back. What's involved that is in my special guest is Kevin Govender, author of the rise of the sharing economy. So Kevin, just before the break, we mentioned COVID and the impact of COVID. So let's talk a little bit about that because we've now, what is the second year? And by the looks of things, we're going to go into 2022 with COVID as well. In the beginning, everybody was going, "Can't wait to get back to normal." I think normal has left the party quite a while ago.

Thanks, David. No, I agree definitely. I hope there's a time when we can get back to normal, but it's the new normal, right? And I actually, I write, there's a chapter, chapter nine in my book, which talks about disruptors disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Because the reality is that not only with traditional organizations disrupted by COVID, even the disruptors, the sharing economy was also disrupted, but maybe to expand on that. In my book, I talk about many different types of sharing, but I also look at six areas that I give quite a bit of focus on, car sharing, accommodation sharing, book sharing, music sharing, media sharing, and bike sharing. And if you look at the impact of COVID on car sharing and accommodation sharing, I think they were the most impacted because firstly, we were in lockdown, we were in quarantine, we were not allowed to leave our houses for a period of time. So firstly, people were not allowed to travel. So accommodation sharing, Airbnb, went from being extremely busy to having nobody travel and nobody using Airbnb. That had a major impact on the Airbnb and accommodation sharing organizations. They had to adapt and reinvent themselves. So what they did is they created the experience. So where you could be in the comfort of your house and tour Greece, for example. So that's what they did. They created an experience. Or if you like, for example, to

you were passionate about chocolate, how chocolate is made, but you always had this passion of going to Switzerland to see how chocolate was made. Airbnb created that experience from the comfort of your home. You could actually tour the chocolate making in Switzerland, for example. So that's another opportunity of how they've changed. They were disrupted, but they had to change. But interestingly enough, we talked now, Airbnb is on the rise again. The last quarter, quarter three, was booming because people got tired of being at home and just wanted to travel again. If you look at car sharing, Uber drivers unfortunately had to park their cars. They couldn't transport people because you were not allowed to travel. But if you look at music sharing, companies like Netflix, Spotify, they had a boom in the number of subscribers and new memberships because people had to find new hobbies, new things to keep themselves busy. Similar to media sharing, which talks about movies and Netflix and Amazon Prime, obviously from media sharing, but from music sharing. Things like Apple Music, Spotify, again. Those subscriptions and memberships actually boomed. And then bike sharing interestingly enough, there was an increase in the number of people buying bicycles and embarking on bike sharing services because you could be outdoors. You could be physically distancing when you were outdoors.

So that's what you found. There were some companies disrupted and some companies not disrupted, if that makes sense. Excuse me, absolutely it doesn't. And I find that is to me particularly fascinating because it's those people who were prepared to pivot and prepared to look and broaden their perspective. Those are the guys that ended up doing okay. I mean, I know people that are in the property business. 2020, this year 2021, been their best years yet, purely because of the way that they've looked at things. I know some people that have taken some of these massive office buildings and they're now dividing them up and they're doing it like an office sharing thing. If you need an office for an hour or two hours or a week, here you go. Kevin, did you do much research? Because one of the places, and I've certainly found this, that this whole sharing economy has had an impact on is in learning and teaching because suddenly we were forced to everybody go online. We could talk about infrastructure for that, but that's not the purpose of this discussion. But has that exploded as well as part of the sharing economy? Because I mean, I can tell you, I watched countless videos on how to make Salvador Bread.

Yep. So David, that's an interesting question. I wouldn't link it directly to the sharing economy, but I think with the, you know, we talk about the digital, the fucking industrial revolution, the use of technology and technology platforms. For example, if you look at UCT, UCT, UCT has decided from January 2022, they will have an online school. And that's fascinating, right? Which means that instead of you being, if you're living in Cape Town, you go to a school in Cape Town. Now you have the opportunity to be able to go to UCT school and it doesn't matter in which country. A colleague of mine, they are relocating to the UK. Her child, they decided to register their child in UCT online to go to school because it allowed them to go to the UK. And with the time zone being very, very similar, it gives them that opportunity to actually still be in school without being disruptive. So I think that was the main reason a lot of people had to go. You know, schools were not allowed with the quarantine as well as with the physical distancing. It made sense to actually go online. I think it worked well with a lot of students, especially the ones in high school. I think it was a little bit challenging. I've got a six-year-old daughter and Crawford International also went online. And the 30 minutes was quite difficult for a five-year-old to kind of, you know, concentrate and be focused at the time. So you do find that I think it worked well. And definitely it's these platforms that will actually revolutionize education. Now, okay, Kevin, we're going to wrap up. But when we come back, what I'd like to just concentrate on a little bit is your vision for South Africa and for Africa, because that's who I care about the most and how we can start implementing this idea of a sharing economy.

How do we learn to think like this? So we'll talk about that and about where we can get your book when we come back. This is what's involved. My special guest, Kevin Govender, author of The Rise of the Sharing Economy, I find it fascinating. Back in just a bit. And we're back. What's involved it is. My guest is Kevin Govender, and he is the author of The Rise of the Sharing Economy. So, Kevin, in your book, I mean, you've got lots of examples and there's lots of great content there. But all, you know, what it's done for me is I've just now it's made me think even more. And that's a problem because I don't know if I should be sharing my thinking. But we're in terms of South Africa and where we are now. And in terms of Africa, how do we do we look at implementing this sharing economy? How do we go forward for it? What is your view? What is your sort of view there? Thanks, David. I think, you know, I write about in chapter 19, the future of the sharing economy. And I think, you know, the world is changing. There's different business models available out there. So the question is, how do businesses adapt to this new way of thinking? So if the first thing I'd like to say, if you find that the emergence of the cloud technology, that has fundamentally changed the ownership, right? Because instead of owning your own music, or videos, or even content that there is a business, you've put it into the public cloud, and you pay a subscription face to this. So you no longer own the infrastructure or the application. So that's, I think, one of the big things. I think the other thing where I see the future and benefits of the sharing economy is in healthcare. If you look, there's obviously shortages of machines in lots of hospitals, especially the public hospitals.

But if you create a sharing platform, you have ability to actually share these technologies with other people in different countries. And also not just the technology, but the actual practitioners, the doctors, the surgeons, the specialists, these people can now provide services to remote countries through technology. So that's a big thing. I think the other challenge we have is in terms of Wi-Fi sharing. A lot of people don't have access for the infrastructure at home to have Wi-Fi. But there is options to actually do Wi-Fi sharing in the country. You can register onto, there's a company called Font, FON, where you can actually, without having the infrastructure, be able to share somebody else's Wi-Fi through the process. So I think there's obviously some good examples and options that are coming out of there that would help. We've talked, we obviously spoke about ball sharing and all the other areas where this is there. We spoke about agriculture. And I think the future of babysitting, for example, mothers or parents that have free time to consider babysitting. The future of parking, with the amount of parking space, especially in urban areas, you could use technology. Lots of people don't have time to do their own errands. That's something. The future of work, you spoke about locations and work from anywhere, any place. We work is doing that. You could actually have that. And also the future of experiences and leisure activities. What you're finding is if you are passionate about a certain hobby and you think that other people will be interested in this, that can be an important component. So those are some of the things. And the last thing I'd like to touch on, I think, one of the things is I also built a model to understand consumer behavior and how consumers make decisions and what will convince them to move from ownership to access. And I built a model that actually provides concepts. And I think I did research in the US and the UK, and I brought in five things that were unique to South Africa. And those five things were trust, safety, risk. Those are some of the key things that are driving people, convenience. So people who are willing to pay if there's a safe and trustworthy product and it provides convenience to them. Yeah. One of us have noticed, Kevin, and I'm sure that you've touched on this as well, is we're becoming, and I've used this term before, but we as the world population, but I've noticed it because South Africa is my frame of reference. We're becoming more human and it's more important now to reconnect with values and with brands and with things we trust. And when we interact with organizations now, we expect because we go there and go, "Okay, I've given up my time to come and visit you and let's use a website, for example. What are you giving back to me? And how are you sharing with me to enable me to better myself?" And just talking and going back and on that subject, I came across and I'm actually going to be chatting to them in the not too distant future. It's a company called Hey Jude, which is like a virtual assistant. So you can, and it's kind of a hybrid because there's a real person, but then also it can give you all the answers about what the weather is, et cetera, et cetera. But if you say, "Hey Jude, I need somebody to go and pick up my laundry and drop it off," they go, "Certainly." And it happens. If you need a flight booking, it happens. To me, that is fascinating. I mean, in my own sort of experience of this lockdown period, I've been in broadcasting for many, many years and I was always very much a bums in seats person. I needed to sit in the studio and I needed to look across at somebody that was the only way to do it. Now for the last almost two years, we've been doing it remotely like this. And I had the idea, but hang on. I produce, edit, direct podcasts. Surely if I offer this service to the corporate world out there and say, "Hey, here's a great way of sharing some of your content, building trust." And people have gone, "Wow, that's a brilliant idea." So there is definitely a way to get involved and a way to look at this. And I think the most important thing that we can do right now, Kevin, is get hold of the book, read the book. Because I was, like I said, it gave me a lot more questions, but it's a fantastic book. Where is it available?

So the book is, thank you for that. The book is available as a hard copy and ebook on all major platforms, such as Amazon, you take a lot, books and bookstores such as exclusive books. It's also available directly from me if you would like a signed copy. And I was surprised the other day, I just did a Google to see where the books are showing and I see macro. I never knew back row sells books and I see the book is on back row as well. So that was a little bit surprising. But as I said, I do have some copies, which

I can sign and you want them welcome to contact me directly. Should you require to buy one? How do we do that? Do you have a website we can go to? No, you can actually, I'm going to give you my, maybe I should give you my email address and you could just send me an email and I can, we can take it from there. Fantastic. What is that address, Kevin? The email is Kevin.Governor1@yahoo.com. So it's K-E-V-I-N.Governor-G-O-V-E-N-D-E-R, the number one at yahoo.com. Cool. And then we can make a plan and get those books and a signed copy. Kevin, before I let you go, what's next in Kevin Govender's life? I mean, you've started something with this book now. Yes. I think what I would like to do, as we discussed, there's a lot of opportunities that we could actually gain from this book and also alternative business models. So I would like to get this, to speak to students, speak to companies, to show them the alternative business models that are existent and how they can actually reinvent and reimagine their businesses. Our students can actually get to understand what's happening in the real world and how they can make a big difference to this. So my focus is to get this out. I've been asked, is there a second book? I must say I really enjoyed the book, the experience I published with Tracy McDonald. And it's been a great experience for me. And to be honest, I would love, I do, I have thought of a title for the second book, but I haven't decided whether I'm going to do it, but that is definitely something. And yeah. I would encourage it, Kevin. I would encourage it. A handbook for the sharing economy, I think. Because I think that's where a lot of people are stuck, as you mentioned. It's like, okay, everything's changing, but what do we do?

Show me how to see these opportunities. So I think that is absolutely brilliant. Kevin Governor, a brilliant book. Well done on that. And thank you for taking the time out and having a chat to us. I do really appreciate it. Thank you very much, David. And thank you for the opportunity for hosting me on your show. There we go. Wraps it up for this edition of What's Involved. As I said, my special guest has been Kevin Governor. Go out, look for the book. Get it. It's called The Rise of the Sharing Economy. It will definitely open your eyes. So wrapping it up, as I said, to each and every one of you, look after yourselves. Take care and thank you for listening.