Welcome to Cabshare!

Welcome to www.cabshare.in.

I am Rajan and I want to share with you the story of why we built Cabshare – sharing taxi and sharing

auto rickshaw rides for a greener tomorrow.

It emerged from the hardship we had faced, just as

you do when you travel to another city or, in your

daily commute or, the many times you take an auto

or a cab – late nights, rainy days, emergencies, all

those unpredictable days.

The year was 2013 and I was a frequent business

traveller. And then my father fell ill in Chandigarh. I

had been based in Delhi and found myself travelling

to Chandigarh almost every weekend.

I was using a cab service to the airport in Delhi and

once I landed in Chandigarh, from airport to home. It took a couple of those long weekends before I

began to think ‘what a waste’. It wasn’t just the fare I was thinking of, there was more than one aspect

to this waste and I’ll come to that in a minute.

Meanwhile, my business travel continued. The airports in

Bangalore and Hyderabad shifted out of the city so that airport-

to-hotel time doubled. In the beginning, I didn’t notice it. We

never do. When things get progressively more difficult or

inconvenient, we tend to adjust ourselves to the new situation.

But, with the Chandigarh thought of ‘what a waste’ already

going through my mind, I couldn’t help noticing that it was a

very long way from airport into the city, particularly in these

two cities – a boring one, if I may add. The first leg was open

monotony after a couple of trips, more so if you land in the

dark, and the second leg – the city stretch – well, the cab

crawled in the bumper-to-bumper traffic. It was monotony and boredom of a different kind – of narrow,

frustrating impatience.

I couldn’t change the distance, nor the traffic, but I could change the circumstance – the boredom of it

all. I could have company within the cab – if only I could share the cab with another person, or persons.

At a personal level, the cab fare didn’t have to be as high. It could be halved. At the level of earth and its

future, which I believe we must be conscious of and act upon, I was adding to the carbon footprint. I was

adding to the clogged traffic too which adds its own considerable bit to pollution.

What if sharing cabs became the defacto mode of travel?

We would be correcting so many things in one go – fares would be halved, traffic congestion can ease,

level of pollution will lower, our carbon footprint will reduce too.

I shared the idea with my batchmate and friend from IIT-Delhi, Rohit. He concurred with my view. We

then shared it with Kunal, again a friend from the same batch and institute who, in turn, roped in Pankaj.

Each of us shared our experiences and I’ll mention Kunal’s observations since they highlight yet another

concern. He too works in Delhi and when he lands at the Mumbai airport, or any large airport for that

matter, he finds as we all do, that he has to wait a while for his turn, although a fleet of Meru Cabs is

queued to carry passengers – which is a perfectly systematic way of managing the current set of things,

but what if there can be a better way? A completely different way?

One evening, Kunal’s flight was delayed with rains in Mumbai. So, he told his parents not to send the car

to pick him up at the airport, that he will take a cab home. When it reached Delhi, the aircraft hovered in

the air, landing finally at 1 in the morning. By the time he waited his turn to get into a cab in Delhi and

reached home in Gurgaon, it was 2.30 in the morning.

We have taken these inconveniences for granted, that things will remain this way.

But...

What if we didn’t have to wait so long at the cab queue?

What if we can share a cab or an auto with another?

What if we can have company during the rides?

What if all of us shared cabs? Or autos?

What if we can easily find the people ready to share a cab or an auto with us?

More such experiences emerged as the four of us talked.

Of colleagues stuck in the HUDA City Metro Station, looking for cabs in Delhi, particularly when it rained,

although it’s quite easy to share a cab at this

point. Or at CST Station in Mumbai. So, when

a colleague who reaches office late, says,

“Couldn’t get a cab or auto,” or “Traffic was

terrible,” we had to go with that reason – a

perfectly valid reason when we didn’t share

cabs.

The Metro is a great improvement for Delhi.

But, if you didn’t stay near the Metro station,

reaching the Metro morning or evening is

still a terrible inconvenience. Returning

home at night from the Metro station can be

hell. What do you do after the Metro shuts at

night? How do women reach home after that?

Adding to the Metro woes, people were travelling all the way from Noida to Gurgaon and back to Noida

– 40-45 kilometres each way, every week day of their lives, some taking a cab from Faridabad to

Gurgaon, because their home is in one place and work place in the other.

What if you shared a cab with a stranger, yes, but a stranger you can trust, so that you have a safe,

assured and less expensive ride home.

Cab sharing is more than just saving a substantial part of the fare. That’s just the initial benefit.

When the idea of cab sharing kicks in, as it is doing across the world, and with great speed in India too,

traffic will be that much more manageable and we leave a cleaner earth for our children to live their

lives. Meanwhile, our own lives will become safer and with the company of others to enjoy and to

enhance ours.

With that thought in mind, we started www.cabshare.in, bringing shared autos and shared cabs to you.

Wishing you a safe, shared ride!