Carpooling picks up momentum in city

Hyderabad: Even as the demand for the cab and taxi services is on rise, carpooling in some communities, especially employees from Hi-Tech City, Gachibowli, Lingampally and other surrounding areas, is picking up, affecting the cab services.

There are many web portals to help set carpool. The portals help in identifying ride matches for people travelling the same route and connect rides, communicate and share costs in cashless ways.

Quick Ride, SRide, Blabla, Zify, Co-yatri are some carpooling service portals that provide help to commute in a smart way. Some companies are also associated with working IT corporate to enable commutation.

In carpooling world, rides are paid in terms of points, which can be bought on any carpooling portal. One point is equivalent to one rupee. Ride givers can accumulate these points to redeem them or use to pay for rides that they take from other car riders.

Most carpoolers or ride givers are professionals and are willing to share their car with others who travel the same route. The credentials of carpool users are authenticated through the personal mail or social media credential. While a carpool is not run on commercial lines like a taxi, it helps ride givers meet fuel expenses and is cheaper than hiring a taxi service.

"Carpooling is comfortable to travel, as it is difficult to drive very long distance every day in the peak office hours. If we ensure that there is no deviation from the route before we choose the pool partner that will be an ideal ride," said Anil Verma, who travels from Chintal to Gachibowli.

"Carpooling is cool, but the only problem is that I have to walk up to the main road and wait before the ride givers come, as it is not possible in carpooling to come into the lanes of the colonies," says Arvind Kumar, who travels from Yousufguda to Financial district.