VENTURE SPECIAL................... BABY YOU CAN RIDE MY CAR

BABY YOU CAN RIDE MY CAR

    It first shot to prominence during World War II in the US as a rationing tactic, and subsequently during the energy crises in the ’70s. Today, the benefits of carpooling are evident, savings in fuel and a cleaner environment being the two main ones. Yet, getting people — at least in India — to either pool their cars or to participate in the concept hasn’t quite been easy. One way to do it, reckons Sameer Khanna, is to commercialize it. The former multimedia manager with Ericsson believes carpooling is the best way to solve the congestion problem and meet urban transport needs.
    “It’s not our default behaviour to carpool. Reasons vary from egos and attitude to flexibility issues and payments getting messy. People take for granted who pays.”
    Khanna launched a survey on social media on whether carpooling managed by a third party will work and to understand the challenges of sharing rides. About 2,500 people gave a thumbs up to the need for a third party to manage carpooling. The result is FolksVagn, an app and a website, with a catch line: ‘Getting there, together’. In the UK and Europe, Lyft.com offers carpools as a service and in the US ZimRide sets up carpools within large corporations.
    FolksVagn provides the system and manages the backend that involves registering car owners and passengers. It’s a C2C service, where people using the app can register their cars for pooling. For those looking for rides, the system works much like a pre-paid mobile services. They load, say, 1,000 a month and can use it to pay for the rides. The passenger could be on a different car each day. She gets an alert on people offering a carpool on her route and if she ‘accepts’ the 'invite’ on the app, the car owner picks her up. The passenger pays 3.50 per km. FolksVagn takes 50 paise per km and the rest goes to the car owner.
    Says Khanna: “We have 10,000 members in the Delhi NCR region and enable 100 rides a day.” It’s a self-funded venture with a 12-people team. FolksVagn started in Delhi NCR about 18 months back and is now planning to expand to Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai and Kolkata. FolksVagn is targeting areas with a large number of offices and a sizeable population going to a single area to work. For instance at Cyber City in Gurgaon there are 500 companies, 17 office buildings, over 2 lakh employees and 50,000 personal cars driving in every day. Besides, employees come in Metro, buses and taxis. Says Khanna: “We will launch a campaign — Saath Chalo — in April to encourage carpooling in the area.”
    Rachna Nath, leader, retail, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) India, says the model opens up opportunities in allied areas as well. “For instance, FolksVagn can look at becoming an aggregator for vacant inventory of taxi services like Meru Cabs. That way you expand the market with incremental investment and tap into a new business.”
    As of now Khanna, who is yet to make money on the venture, is focused on expanding the user base. “It’s about changing mindsets. We are targeting the young office goers as they are more open to try out new things.”

ETM140316