The Ultimate List of CarPooling Initiatives in India |

I’ll not use the Wikipedia definition here. Rather, I’ll try making the point clear by giving out an easy example. I have a car. I use it to go to my college daily. Say four other students in my college also use their cars to come to college. What we’re doing is basically five people using five different cars to go to the same place while going through the same route. We’re wasting a lot of fuel in the process.

This very example shows that if one of us would have used our car, and picked the others in the way we could have saved 4/5th of the cumulative fuel used in one trip. That fraction has a huge weightage as the fuel used on one side by a car is not anything less that 2-3 L (approx estimation) for a car each. Using one car and picking others on the way, and charging them a fraction of the cost incurred in the whole trip is known as car-pooling. It saves commuters money as well as prevents wastage of fuel.

The above example is a very crude one, and the figures might be wrong. But, it must have given you an idea of how much of the world’s fuel we car-owners waste daily due to lack of carpooling initiatives or services in India.

While informal carpooling in India might be happening in different places it’s time we start having an organised system where any newbie can register for a ride to his office/college. Here are some of the initiatives being taken currently in India:

• OliveTrips– Perhaps this is the most unique car-pooling initiative taken in India as of now. OliveTrips, based in Vadodara, connects people so that they can undertake shared trips together and save money and fuel.The unique thing about OliveTrips is that they send customized EcoReportshowing how much fuel and money was saved due to the carpool the rider was part of – something which should definitely make people feel good and encourage them to use the service again. Not only that, the OliveTrips app used to calculate the savings helps to calculate the CO2 emission as well, which is then mentioned in the report.People interested in either giving out their cars for ride-sharing or in being a passenger can go to their website and register. The registration process is a bit detailed, but is focussed at making the whole ride comfortable for the individual by helping him/her find out the right ride-sharing group. After all, carpooling shouldn’t become a menace for eve-teasers. The noble initiative is for free, and the vehicle owner has a choice of selecting the individuals he wants to travel with after having a look at the interested people’s profiles.
• MegaCarPool– This carpooling service is available in New Delhi and was started out by infrastructure construction company HICC Ltd. The best thing I liked about Mega Car Pool is that its members are verified before they can enter into any carpool. The verification process involves a visit at home by a Mega Car Pool employee who then looks at the person’s identification credentials and decides whether he/she is fit for ride-sharing or not. It also includes presentation of residential proof, driving license and citizenship ID.When a member is selected, he’s given a smart card with ID code and a GPS device is installed in his car. People who do not own any car can only enter into the club if a car-owner refers them. The following image will help explain the card system better:

  
  

• Carpooling.in – It’s a web portal which lets users anywhere in India create a carpool event. Interested members can get in touch with them through the site’s help. Although the website does not get a lot of traffic, and is not a validated way of forming a carpool, yet one can see current carpool listings from different cities like Gurgaon and Trichy.
• Wipro’s eShareride – Wipro launched this ride-sharing initiative for its employees a year ago in Bangalore and it has been doing good as far as I know. It was tested out with 100 people initially, and seeing the positive in-house response the whole thing was supposed to be phased out to more than 10,000 employees in their Bangalore offices. For facilitating the car-pooling process, application named eShareRide helps the staff helps its staff in boarding cars from various parts of the city to reach office and back to their residences.
• vRideAlong– An initiative by Bangalore based professionals, vRideAlong is a not-for-profit, self-funded, ‘Go Green’ ridesharing (carpool/bikepool) initiative. Started out in Bangalore the service has now spread across cities like Delhi, Mumbai and even outside India. The process is simple – register with your Corporate Email Id, add a route with origin, destination and intermediate locations, add a journey specifying date, time etc and then simply search ‘ride-sharers’ or ‘offer’ a ride to find people and contact them through their email service.

Companies should come up with more such initiatives. Being an IT giant, it might have been easier for Wipro to make a software for the whole thing.

The above initiatives are really doing a good job of conserving fuel and reducing the carbon footprint. I believe more such initiatives should be undertaken. These carpools can only be effective if they are concentrated to local regions. Although, we’ve seen some of them in the metropolitan cities, it’s time we start having organised Car Pools in smaller towns as well.

Car pool services can be non-profitable as in OliveTrips’ case, and profitable as in MegaCarPool’s case. I believe we should look upto the western nations where carpooling has become a common thing.

If you know of any car pooling startup or initiative near you just get in touch, so that we could update this list for others’ goodwill.