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Alok's Posts / Startup

Carpools never worked. Never will?

By Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal on 14 Comments / 2261 views

This graph in the Wall Street Journal yesterday summed up what I have been suspecting for a long while:

That CARPOOLING was a dead business to start with and would never take off.

First, let me first narrate a personal story:

About 6 years ago, much to the INSISTENCE of my wife, I agreed (for the first time in my life) to let my daughter travel in a school carpool from Peddar Road to J.B Petit at Colaba.

I asked my wife who the ‘pooler’ was and she mentioned a respectable family who lived on Peddar Road (Mumbai), whom we had known for a while. She said, “Alok, stop being paranoid. They are ‘like us'”.

Well, we got to know soon enough 🙁

One day, my daughter came home looking shaken up. When my wife asked her the issue, she said, “Mom, the maid had a fight with the driver in my friend’s car. The driver got mad; the maid got off the car in the middle of the road and then we were alone with this really crazy driver…”

I SCREAMED and shouted and asked my wife to call the person and yell at them. She DID NOT. She just called and told them that the arrangement was OFF.

Carpool gaya ‘Tel Lene’.

Since then and even now, a lot of entrepreneurs developed carpooling business models, apps, ideas etc. I never understood that model either because:

– Who wants to sit in a car with strangers (or molestors) or drunks or fellows with bad body odour?

– How can I sit and make calls when I am in car with people who I will be traveling with all the time?

– How do I co-ordinate travel plans? What if I am 10 minutes late? What happens if I wanna go home early from work?

I think the Wall Street Journal speaks not just of the USA but of India too. 

The car was the best bubble invented by man. Can we please not make people intrude in it?

****

 

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14 Comments

  1. Alok: The top graph talks about only a certain population (i.e., people who carpool to work) of the carpoolers/ride-sharers, and one cannot generalize things based on this graph alone. I can still see the overall carpooling numbers are fairly constant in last 5 years.

    Because this article is about US, I’ll mostly stick to my experience in US. As a student, I carpooled many times for a ride to/from airports, or to travel from one city to another city, or sometimes to get across from one part of the city to another; and it’s quite common within student community in US. For students who don’t have enough resources to own a car and in cities where public transport is not that great (which is very common in many US cities) it works great — the student driver makes some extra money and the other person gets an affordable ride.

    Another specific example I found where it works is in Europe, where backpackers (which is a big number in Europe) carpool all the time.

    I think it might not work in all cases like above, but it sure does have situations where it works and has always worked. If sites like zimride.com, carpoolers.com, and Craigslist still are doing carpooling business, I strongly feel there has to be a reason.

  2. Alok Sir,

    I second your views, but, I feel if not car-pool can we use a small car, for instance in Juhu there is this so called Jamnabai School, where the filthy rich parents send their filthy kids in a big sedan or an SUV, these guys create a traffic which goes on for at least 2 hours, after which the roads are clean, and this happens thrice a day, morning, noon and eve. If not carpool at least let the kids go by school bus, if they want A.C. get a travels guy who can provide the same (Ecole Mondiale in Juhu does it).

    Second, in the early days the car was bought for two reasons one for transportation from point A to point B, and second for letting people know that they have a car (if needed during an emergency) they can use. But now it’s just purely a show off statement,(remember the OLX ad{bech de}) beep, bech de how many times will you sell a car by just seeing your neighbor buying a bigger one than yours, though now I feel the middle class people have become quite price sensitive and they tend to save more. A car should only be used as a mode of transport not as a style statement. People buy SUV and only person rides in it, or else buys an AUDI, BMW, Merc or XYZ foreign brand, and for riding it they use a driver, whats the use yaar if you can’t drive your own car, just for siting in the back seat and reading the newspapers or being over the phone. I do understand work is worship, but driving is just simply love. If you don’t drive your car you can’t love it.

    Back to the topic, Carpool is good for those who work in the same company or are good friends. It works out with them. 

    Also I always try to help old people, or school kids, by giving them a ride if they are on the same way.

    I also would suggest why not use smaller cars for kids (while going to school) or for use by partner(for shopping, lesser the space, lesser the expense 😛 , a hatchback works well or may b the electric car.

    These are just my views, no offense to the rich, it’s your money use it wisely not arrogantly (Paisa haath ka mail hai mere bhai), and also I love driving across anywhere, only in smaller cars, and also I say why buy something that you can’t ride. 

  3. Alok,

    Check https://SmartMumbaikar.com It is Instant + Trusted + Car/Auto/Bike/Taxi pool by missed call.

    1. Instant – No cancellation of trip. When you want to go just 5 minutes before you give a missed call

    2. Trusted – 100% verified user base (we only allow office email, no fake yahoo/gmail/fb login)

    3. Not only car but auto/taxi/car/bike pool – What If Me and Karan not having car but going on same route!

    Do give it a spin, Check https://SmartMumbaikar.com

  4. What about changing demographics and socio-economic changes between 1980 -2010?

    Factors such as 1) rising car affordability, 2) increasing household incomes, 3) more women in the workforce thereby increasing disposable income, 4) easier access to credit for buying cars, etc…

    We also have more flexible work timings compared to earlier which makes carpooling more inconvenient. It was easier for people working in factories in shifts to carpool as compared to majority of the workforce today where people don’t exactly arrive and leave at a fixed time from their work place. 

    Also, one can also say from the chart that the absolute number of people who prefer carpooling has remained stable but the number of cars (car ownership) has increased over the last 3 decades which gives the impression that carpooling has declined in the US. I don’t have the data to back this up but its easy to assume that car ownership in the US has grown quite a bit in the last 30 years. 

    Maybe the financial incentive wrt to toll free lanes on major highways aren’t such a big factor anymore because of rising incomes. The flip side of that is the government would want people to buy more cars instead of carpooling due to the benefits for the economy. 

    I don’t disagree with the fact that most people would assume that carpooling intrudes on one’s personal space but I think the reasons for why it hasn’t taken off could be a bit more complicated. 

  5. I think carpooling has been existing in India for a long time and works in the following ways

    1. Solves the problem of transportation from point A to point B with a minimum hassle-maximum comfort trade off.

    2. Big market of middle class population using road transportation.

    3. Saves people the cost of owning and maintaining a car.

    Now, how to solve some of the problems stated:

    1. Categorize services into basic(normal carpooling), premium(better car, less people, higher price) and luxury(something like Uber)

    2. Collect data from the drivers/customers and analyze them. For example who comes early, who comes late, who stinks, etc. Group them accordingly, maybe put all the stinkys together to make them comfortable….  

    In my opinion, the trick to startup and scale a carpooling service is by starting with a destination (for example a big office building). Interview people there who would be interested in the service and group people based on their route from home to work. Then move on to the next destination. That way you can start with 1 car and scale based on demand.

  6. This was the first idea I started working on( It was around 2006). Though car pooling is promoted by even state government, still people are not adopted it.  Following are the reasons I have observed:-

    1) There are still alternatives available. I am talking about here in NCR region(Metro, Cab/Bus service provide by office, auto and CNG). 

    2) Unless until car pooled partners are not putting up in same society and going to same office, matching office timing and route is still a problem. Working hours are increasing but becoming flexible. Now why someone will wait for even half an hour for his/her car pool partner to finish off his work.

    3) Petrol and Diesel is still not that expensive for people who can afford a car. Here a person has to choose between comfort of traveling alone vs money spent. Till its affordable people will prefer going alone.

    4) Security is a problem, specially for women. 

    Hope that someday someone will find a solution and business model.

  7. Interesting and Relevant points Alok…Just to add 1 more which is more at a sub-conscious level

    Lets take India for eg. Less than 2.5% of the population owns cars considering multiple cars in a family in some cases and a family size of 4. So, car buying & usage is still an aspirational thing & a status symbol for the vast middle class population (who is incidentally also the target audience for car pooling). Hence, have observed an average middle-class person feeling a mental road-block subconsciously thinking that ‘Hey if I can afford the car loan EMI & its fuel cost, why shouldn’t I get to enjoy it properly?’

  8. Carpools never worked and will never work, or will never pick up. 

    But if you have a deep look at it 

    1.) It can provide really cheap rides, similar to public transportation.

    2.) The comfort is as much as of a car.

    3.) Can reduce traffic and pollution to one third of the current numbers.

    But why has it not worked then? what we at Cubito believe,it is due to lack of insights of the dynamics(the reasons you mentioned and more) while implementing.

    That’s why there needs to be a moderator who enables the pooling and takes responsibility of the things that you have mentioned and this is exactly what can be solved by cab-pooling. It needs to be studied in depth and we have changed and iterated a lot of parameters studying the behavior and pattern of people. The affects of pooling are huge, hence giving hard inputs is definitely worth it.

  9. @Akhil

    Nice initiative, Just keep it up and dont give up!

    All the best

    Raxit

  10. Alok,

    A personal Incident cannot be representative of all instances….

    When I was in school we had two family friends whose kids (different ages) studied in the same area. The cars were alternated to drop and pick up 7 kids for 8 years till we changed our schools or went to college. It worked real well as the drivers were almost 4 to 10 yrs with our families and there was no maid or anyone else when we rode to and from school.

    Car pooling works from point to point transport in cities where tranpost fascilities is either poor or insufficient. It is said that developed countries have the rich using public transport while the middle class use cars and ancilliary pools (taxi/auto).

    As transport develops and gets more expensive it becomes less affordable for the masses who cannot own personal transport and as the higher middle class progresses they look for more efficient tranport fascilities to travel longer distances. This creates a consumer pool that needs cheaper formats of point to point transport.

    The ‘tel’ in transport point to point pooling

    If the price is right strangers are met who have a similar background with the same worries making it perfectly viable to become travel companions.

    Who makes calls nowadays with twitter/email/whatsapp/sms and apps!

    In point to point travel its easy to be on time as all travellers have similar schedules. If everyone is late its a contingent situation.

    Travel plans are not co-ordinated they are only participatory. You either are part of the days ride or not.

    The systemic changes in US society has driven them away from car pool. If you were to check the corellation between this chart and the security concerns chart or the crime rate chart it would reveal reasons for the changes in wall street journal’s chart as predictable.

    In India the scenario is rather different with our population and fascilities being a good 20 years behind these countries. While I may not readily participate in a car pool. I still believe that point to point transport pool is still a viable business.

     

     

  11. Thanks Raxit and all the best for Smart Mumbaikars.

  12. Gud one Alok you are that Elephant who always blow away the blinde folds of those 7 blind fools who Perceive the truth as they believe:)))

  13. In Gurgaon, many people Carpool. And those who did, they stuff people inside the car ( like chickens inside the cages ) to maximise the revenue. I have tried using carpooling but my experience has been terrible. Imagine being 1 of the 4 sitting in rear seats in small Hatchbacks. It’s irritating. I love to talk, and sometimes I start talking to fellow passengers, sometimes it’s nice to meet people of similar interests, but rest of the times keeping quiet is what most people do. Also, as rightly pointed, you never who all these people are. Can be criminals as well, and you are at mercy of them almost every time. They can stop car at anytime and show you the path ahead.

    I bought a car to get rid of public transport drama. And the experience has been amazing. No tension, no distraction and everything has been amazing ever since. 

    I tried ditching car for a day to experience how it feels like doing car pool. I used public transport for entire journey. Wasted 3 hours, had extreme tiredness in evening. Feels terrible.

    Car Pooling for me is Big No No.

    Thanks for the article :)) 

  14. Carpooling is as good as Toilet pooling!

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