Tired of public transport hassles? Here's an app which can help you hitch a ride to your workplace at reasonable rates

Source: http://www.iamin.in/en/mumbai-north-west/news/tired-public-transport-hassles-heres-app-which-can-help-you-hitch-ride-your-workplace-reasonable-73657



L-R: Shobhit Srivastava and Rohit Karan started ShareACar app where citizens can carpool for daily commuting. Anagha Sawan/iamin




With the petrol prices and the number of unique start-ups, on the rise in tandem, ex-IITans Rohit Karan,31, and Shobhit Srivastava,32, have launched an application, which enables you to share a car and cut individual costs. The app itself is named ShareACar, which provides carpooling service to commuters.

Launched on September, 23, this year Shobhit Srivastava said, “The motive behind launching the app was to cut down the time and daily expenses of commuters and to reduce traffic issues in the city. The idea came about from our own experiences of facing daily traffic problems and thereby came up with the concept of ShareACar.”

How does it work?

The app has basically two users – riders (or the drivers) and passengers. Both the passengers as well as riders have to register themselves with the app first and share details like name, age, gender and verify the same through SMS or e-mail. The commuters will have to recharge their R-wallet (an online facility) with a minimum amount of Rs 100 before requesting for the carpool option.


A rider can charge the passenger a maximum of Rs 7 per kilometre for the trip, which will help him or her cover his car maintenance and other car expenses. Once the passenger gets down from the car, the total amount will be deducted from the commuter’s account and credited to the driver’s account.

What’s more? Both the riders and commuters will get the profiles of each other and they have the option of accepting or rejecting each other.

The challenges

To develop the app, both Rohit and Shobhit quit their jobs. Rohit said, “We wanted to focus on the app development because of which we both quit our jobs. We took lots of effort to develop the layout, conduct survey and interact with the daily commuters about the carpooling concept and what would the commuters like to see etc. We wanted to give the commuters different option to travel other than public transport.”

Within a month, the app has been used by around 200 passengers and 35 riders. The routes which are preferred for carpooling include Eastern Freeway, JVLR, Aarey Colony. The app is available only on the android platform as of now and can be downloaded from Google Play Store.