About Parth Patel and the reason behind this idea?
Hi, I’m Parth Patel, co-founder of Zupp – an intra-city carpooling mobile app for daily office commute. In 2011, after graduating from IIT Delhi, I joined EY in Mumbai. Since I was accustomed to a hassle-free campus life, the menace of daily commute in Mumbai caught me unawares. At first, my good landlord allowed me to use his car for daily office commute, as his kids were all settled abroad and the car was just catching dust.
I drove to office for first couple of days, but found it harder each day to find a parking spot. Eventually I was forced to shun the idea of taking my own car and instead started hailing taxis. I traveled daily from my home in Bandra West to the EY office in Dadar West. I had to wait for at least 15 mins before I got a taxi. The likes of Ola & Uber were not available that time.
Somehow for next 4 years I managed to juggle between traveling via taxis, trains and autos to office. With the advent of Ola & Uber, I gave them a try, but soon realized that the costs are higher or similar to hailing a kaali peeli taxi. Plus nowadays I am always charged a surge fare. Trains are also getting over-crowded day after day. Traffic jams and pollution are a common phenomena.
The above-highlighted issues of daily commute are faced by all Mumbaikars. What could be the solution? “Carpooling”, uttered my EY colleague and co-founder Vipin over a casual coffee conversation.
And hence, a couple of months down the line, we launched Zupp – an intra-city carpooling mobile app for daily office commute. In 15 days, we have close to 400 rides being hosted/requested daily. Initially we are targeting Delhi and Mumbai. Once we have a critical mass in these cities, we will start focusing on other metros as well. The target is to get 500 transactions per day in next 3 months.
Challenges you are facing?
The key challenge is to change the customer’s behaviour, and encourage him/her to carpool. Hence one of our taglines is “Sharing is the new cool”. Just as people were reluctant to buy stuff online 10 years back, people are apprehensive to carpool today. But 5 years down the line, we are sure that carpooling would become a norm.
Safety is a key challenge. For that, we have all female carpool, SOS button and corporate email ID verification in Zupp. Our unique route-matching algorithm ensures best match.
The key USPs of Zupp App?
1) Users have to store home-office route “just once”. Zupp will get them the best carpool buddy everyday post that. There is no need to enter origin, destination, time of travel, etc. daily.
2) Unique route-matching algorithm which ensures higher accuracy while pairing two co-travelers. We have all female carpool, SOS button and corporate email ID verification to ensure safety.