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Proposed by:Bhaskar NA
Contact (bhaskar, bhaskarna@yahoo.com, 9880644833, skype):
Best way and times to contact during RHoK 2.0 Dec 4/5 2010: e.g. email, but on skype 10am-3pm EST (GMT+5)
Very few organizations provide pickup/drop service to their employees.
Employees without office commute facilities have difficulty in using public transport, thereby increasing the use of personal and private vehicles.
Congestion on roads is increased by usage of non-shared transport increasing stress & decreasing productivity.
Western concepts such as car pooling have proven ineffective in the Indian environment.
Pollution is a great challenge in Indian metros’ and petrol is the valuable resource which we want to save.
Indicates clear demand for efficient commute solution targeting office goers
3 minute demo explains the proof of concept:
http://www.zumodrive.com/share/8MoxODY2NW
Problems with current public transport for office goers
For a given start and end point, office goers doesn’t get comfortable public transport
Office goers needs to switch multiple buses
This takes more time
Commuter covers extra distance than required
Commuter need to align with multiple routes
For few start/end points, there will not be public transport at all.
Office goers needs to go with available public transport
Look for auto or private vehicle for remaining uncovered distance.
Office goers doesn’t know whether bus comes or doesn’t come
Office goers can’t check if expected bus will arrive or already left
Proposed Solution
create “Commute market place” where
Regular office commuters express intent to commute with daily commute details like pickup/drop points and time.
TravelVendor provides customized commute solutions based on the expressed interest (time, source/destination etc.) with optimum distance.
How It Works
Commuter subscribes via online registration form, providing daily commute details.
TravelVendor registers with details of available inventory, price expectations, preferred timings & routes.
TravelVendor official will login and query the list of people interested for the given source / destination / time.
Based on the number of commuters, TravelVendor will compute the vehicle size and sends monthly / quarterly / half yearly subscription fee details to commuters. (email/sms)
Commuters will contact TravelVendor and signup with payment terms/route/schedule. (offline)
Benefits for commuters
Stress free, economic travel in optimal time.
Benefits for TravelVendor
New source of revenues Vehicle inventory is effectively used. Add more confidence to office goers on travelVendor so more office goers starts adopting it.
Benefits for the ecosystem
Reduce pollution & congestion
a. We need to have a organization that should set up and own a website where commuters can come and register to avail the commute solution.
b. Organization need to engage the good travel vendors.
c. Most of the travel vendors doesn't want to take risk so, might not show the interest in participating. In this case, this organization need to work with multiple travel vendors in the backend and act like a single window of contact for all the commuters.
d. organization might need to setup a call center
Since commuter has already paid to the travel vendor, he tries to utilize almost always for the office.
This model has two way commitment (between travel vendor and commuters) system should work fine.
Since more travel vendors are participating, commuters might get the solution at competitive rates.
Road congestion will greatly reduce.
Office goers in indian metros like bangalore will be greatly benifited
Almost stop their personal vehicles
Reduce the parking demand in the office
Reduce the petrol consumption
Commuteeasy.com -
car pooling in bangalore. this works only if a individual owns/drives a vehicle.
cabpool.com - pooling people who wants to mostly for catching the flight in US.
How will this work be taken to real users, or further developed? Will this be an ongoing team? Is there a NGO/group that's sponsoring it as an ongoing project? Who/how/when?
We can take two approaches:
1. Build a site and open up it for the community.
Let commuters and travel vendors come together and establish the relationship them selves.
This doesn't require any group or infrastructure.
It requires only site building and hosting.
Constraints:
Travel vendor need to be more friendly - setup call center etc,. issue monthly pass etc.,
Travel vendor should visit companies and do some PR work and give some discounts if more commuters participate from same company
As a individual, it is tough to engage the well known travel vendor. So, we need to create some buzz on this through proper channels. Seek for more inputs here.
2. Build a site and own the complete business by abstracting all the travel vendors
This requires a proper call center setup by a new business organization
Need to abstract all the travel vendors
Should take care of registering the commuters and provide them the uninterrupted commute service from one of the travel vendor.
Should take care of getting money from Commuters and give money to travel vendor. And take the profit share in between to sustain it.
Proof of concept developed using php and mysql using yahoo maps api's. Seeking for more inputs from the community before making the site live.