You are all set for your office, you look at your watch and realize that you are already late for your office. In a hurry, you ask or rather plead with the auto drivers or cab drivers to drop you at the station. You desperately pray from the bottom of your heart, that the driver agrees to take you.
The driver mercilessly rejects your request, the most common reason being that they don’t want to travel a short distance. Agitated you try to book from big companies like OLA & Uber, and you feel like you are being cheated when they charge you double the rate, and that too with a min 10 to 15 minutes waiting time.
This is where the Metroride App comes into the picture. It is an app that connects daily commuters to public transport, corporate parks, and colleges or universities. It gives you the option to book 2 or 3-wheeler electric vehicles to reach your desired destination.
MetroRide App
Metro ride services are available in Hyderabad, Bangalore, and Delhi city.
Their average waiting time is 2 minutes as compared to the industry average time of 12 to 15 minutes.
They have many women riders in their fleet, thus supporting women’s empowerment.
They have developed an in-depth user interface. As soon as you open the app you get the option of sharing the ride or private ride. If you choose shared ride it will show you the nearest pick-up point on the screen, you can then select the closest metro station. It also has the option to book two seats for a shared ride. It will then find you are driver, who will come to pick you up in not more than 5 minutes.
They have hired their drivers on salary + incentives.
What makes their model unique is that, unlike the big companies, they are not trying to compete with public transport, instead they are tying up with them. They have already tied up with Hyderabad Metro and are also planning to integrate the mero ticket bookings in their app.
They don’t run their operations parallel to the metro. For e.g. if the metro runs from north to South then they carry its operations East and West, and that too within a radius of 3 to 5 km.
They have tied up with OEMs (Original equipment manufacturers) who provide the vehicles.
During the non-peak hours of the operation which in this case is between 12 pm to 4 pm, MetroRide uses their vehicles for B2B tie-ups, deliveries, and picking and dropping students at educational institutes.
They don’t do any scheduled rides, all their rides are in demand. 92% of their rides are shared and 8% are private rides. All their vehicles are rented. The best part about hiring them is that they don’t charge a surge in prices.
MetroRide Founders
This company is founded by Kaaman Agarwal and Girish Nagpal. Girish conceived this business idea while he was working in Bengaluru. Every day he would drive for 70 to 90 minutes to reach his office. When the metro was inaugurated he thought that his life would be sorted.
To his dismay, he found that the auto drivers refused to travel short distances, and OLA and uber charged a bomb during peak hours for short distances. So he resumed back to driving his car to the office. This point however would prick him and this is how he got this idea. He has 15 years of experience in Co-corporate leadership positions.
Kaaman Agarwal is from a tech background, he worked for 6 years in India and then went to the US and worked there for 12 years in various companies. He and Girish were friends for 15 years and in 2020 they met and discussed this business. Kaaman too faced the same problem in the US and that is why they also have the intention to expand their business in the US to get the 1st movers advantage.
MetroRide Shark tank India
The founders had asked for ₹75 lakhs for 1% equity.
Their 2022 sales were ₹54 lakhs.
Namita Thapar had issues with the high valuation, also the existing big players can easily copy this model and give them big competition, so she did not invest.
Anupam Mittal explained that they can scale up to a certain point, after which they will have to compete with big market players, for that they will need millions of dollars and that is why he was out.
Aman was out but suggested bringing as many people on board as possible.
Amit Jain wanted to have a deeper discussion about the business with the founders and asked them to meet him later.
Peyush was interested, but the valuation was too high for him. He also suggested focusing on being successful in one Indian city before setting eyes on the US. He too did not invest.
Where Can You Find Them
Website | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn
Concluding Remarks
One cannot deny that there is a huge need for services like this, but whether this company will rule this segment or big players will eat them up only time can tell.
They do have a unique business approach to this problem and we do hope that the founders be successful in their vision to expand successfully to the US so that it can give inspiration to many other Indian start-ups to believe that it is possible for them too.
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