Carpooling, ride sharingwitness an all-time low

Hospital, bank and media staff are still using them though

Bookings are few and far between for cab aggregators offering shared rides.

Hariprakash Agrawal, founder and CEO of RideAlly, says people are not using the carpooling option.

“Even if the vaccine comes, people will stay cautious. Carpooling happens between home and office but those trips don’t exist now. Our carpooling business is almost nil,” he says.

He believes it will take at least a year before carpooling catches on again.

“There is a big class divide in other industries but this doesn’t exist in the IT industry, where a CEO and a young employee take the same ride. Unless IT professionals head back to office, we won’t see these rides happening. We might look at relaunching our services by September 2021,” he adds.

Carpooling is happening on a much smaller scale, since most IT company professionals are working from home, says K N M Rao, founder and CEO of Quick Ride.

“Our business is mainly from the IT sector. Initially, the driver and only one person were allowed in a car, now it is 1+2, with one passenger at the front and the other at the back,” he says.

People in the essential sectors, like hospital staff, bank employees and media professionals, are still using Quick Ride, he says.

Business is at about 10 per cent of what it used to be pre-Covid.

“We insist on all precautions on our app. We also insist that everyone instal the Arogya Setu app as a checkpoint,” he adds.

No schools

Carpooling was not a preferred option for women at Go Pink Premium Cabs, but school children were using it extensively, says Anuradha B M, founder.

“Most people are working from home. Since schools are closed, there are no shared rides now. We are only doing airport trips,” she says.

Around 60 per cent of total rides are back. “We are thinking of an option where women who drive can partner with us and share rides,” she adds.

‘Hope to relaunch’

Car rental company Carzonrent had a carpooling option, Ridingo, but it was suspended.

Rajiv Vij, managing director, says, “With the pandemic, carpooling is something which people are uncomfortable about. Also, there needs to be better clarity on carpooling rules.”

Anyone who owns a car and is willing to share rides to office or other cities should be allowed to pool rides, he says.

“Clarity about private vehicles using the concept will help, as nobody wants to try things and get on the wrong side of the law,” he says.

Carzonrent hopes to bring carpooling back in cities like Bengaluru with heavy traffic. “As soon as formal guidelines are issued by state governments, we will be relaunching it,” he told Metrolife.

Big aggregators like Ola and Uber have taken their travel together options ‘Ola Share’ and ‘UberPool’ off their platforms, anticipating low booking.

They did not respond to Metrolife’s request for their comments for this story.