Go green - take a lift

Ranjana Deshmukh generally leaves her office, in central Delhi, at around 7 pm, and walks to the busy traffic junction looking for an auto-rickshaw to take her home to Vasant Kunj, about 15 km away. Auto-rickshaws are her only option since DTC buses are overfull at that time and Vasant Kunj is off the Metro route. But getting one is a nerve wracking affair. There's usually a crowd standing along the kerb and everybody rushes each time one stops. Many times, when Ranjana is lucky to corner one, the driver refuses to take her.

Sounds familiar? If your daily commute from work to home is similarly stressful, you should opt for one of the innovative services that offer a new way of travelling that will not just reduce stress and time but also help bring down travel costs.

'Ride-sharing', as it is called, has already taken root in Mumbai with SmartMumbaikar. The service, which allows people to share an auto or a taxi, a car or a bike, to and from work, will soon be starting operations in the national capital.

To use the service, you need to register on the site, furnish your home and office locations, mobile number and office id. Give a missed call on a number 10 minutes before you're due to leave and SmartMumbaikar provides you a list of people going in the same direction you can share the vehicle with. When you get off, share the cost of the ride with your fellow passengers.

'Ride-sharing' is a version of carpooling that is slowly finding a toehold in Indian cities. In the last couple of years, several carpool services have started in larger metros, trying to get Indians to take to this eco-friendly, pocket-friendly, convenient mode of commuting.

Delhi has had FolksVagn for nearly two years now. Once you've registered and put down your start and end destinations, FolksVagn allows you to choose who you want to travel with — important in Delhi where safety is a vital consideration. As with social media networks, you can 'invite' riders and 'accept' rides, and even rate the drive on a scale of one to five. "We are trying to build a trusted community," says Sameer Khanna, FolkVagn's 33-year-old co-founder.

Pune has a somewhat similar service called Let's Ride, while Bangalore has vRideAlong and Hyderabad has Ridemates.

Despite the launch of so many services, it's still early days. SmartMumbaikar has 20,000 registered users, FolksVagn has 16,000 and Let's Ride 5,500 — a tiny fraction of car-owners/commuters in these metros.

"There are 60 lakh people working in the National Capital Region and around 58 lakh private cars. Of these, 1,600-1,800 cars are on the road at any given time. If we even try to achieve 10 per cent of that, we'll have made a dent," says Khanna.

But that's easier said than done. "Indians are hugely proud of their cars and don't feel comfortable inviting just anyone," says Let's Ride's Rajkumar Mundel. There is also the problem of flexibility. Carpooling ties them down to leaving at one, fixed time every day, something many car owners might chaff at.

Carpooling start-ups have devised ingenious ways to get around these problems. To build trust, for instance, they insist that registrations must be made with company email ids. This gives riders at least one level of authentication. Some like Let's Ride and FolksVagn ask for photographs as well.

Flexibility is a more difficult nut to crack. The services, at present, are mainly for commutes between home and office, not for those one-time trips to go shopping. As for payment, some service providers leave it to car-owners and riders to work out the details of the exchange. Their websites give recommended rates — between Rs.2-3/km. FolksVagn has devised a system whereby riders pay Rs 3.5/km while car-owners get Rs 3/km; the balance 50 paise it takes as service charge.

SmartMumbaikar's Raxit Sheth has worked out that users stand to gain more than Rs 35,000 a year.

gargi.gupta@dnaindia.net;
@togargi