Biking for a healthy life

Under this tie-up, APIIC would be laying cycle tracks crisscrossing Cyberabad area connecting most of the residential clusters with the corporate /workplace clusters and HBC would be setting up Bike Stations in close proximity to MMTS, residential clusters and major transportation hubs from where the commuters can borrow a bike and ride to their work place.

The idea of cycling to work had a great momentum in Mumbai. The person who initiated this company in Mumbai had his routes in Hyderabad. Raj Jangam cofounded the company Cycle Chalao, which was one of the India’s first and fastest growing bike sharing programs. The Cycle Chalao model was simple. They rent out bicycles at major railway stations and public places for a small fee. With pilot research and operations, they wanted to spread their business in various cities of India. The idea of Cycle Chalao came to him not because of passion but from a real life need.

Mumbai had 150 railway stations and they planned five bike stations in and around each bike station, and each station would have 50 bikes. Apart from the basic per month model, they planned, per week and per day pay coupons to charge the commuters. The launch of the company in Mulund was a huge success. All their bicycles were booked and they registered 250 rides in their books within a month. But Cycle Chalao ran into problems as they needed permits from BMC. This was a typical inertia of the large bureaucracy and the BMC was not very keen to give them permits. But then, NGOS came to their rescue. The first ever Cyclothon was held in Mumbai were stars like Salman Khan appeared on a bicycle cheering the crowds.

Because of the green initiative of the venture the local government, civil societies got interested in the programme. Raj Jangam in one of his interviews shared, “The conclusion of our entire research, piloting, advocacy and working with government contracts is that the bicycle sharing systems, if they have to be successful in India have to be fully sponsored by the public authorities, wherein the private corporations shall act as contractors to provide construction, operations and maintenance alone.” 24-year-old Raj who is the cofounder and CEO hails from Himmat Peth in Andhra Pradesh and like thousands of Mumbaikars he too lived in cramped spaces, of community toilets flooded during monsoons. Raj was featured by Forbes, Fast Company and Outlook business magazines for this model of business.

“A bicycle is a mechanism that has transported man for many decades. Nowadays, bicycling is a great way to move from one place to another in short distances. I believe you should use a bicycle for short distances to protect the environment as well as your health”, said Mayor Majid Hussain

Krishna Babu Commissioner GHMC is very happy with this initiative and has received a very good response to the use of bicycle from the IT sector. He feels people working in the IT sector are socially conscious about environment and pollution levels. They welcomed this scheme. Infact Infosys wanted to sponsor free lunch to the employees who come by bicycles. Many people use their cars to move short distances, they increase the rates of pollution causing more pollution problems to our environment. That is why the use of a bicycle for short distances is a really good idea to help lower the rates of pollution. The second reason to use a bicycle for short distances is that you can help lower gasoline consumption. “In fact when we initiated this process at Necklace Road, the HBC had 1200 members and today it has 4000 members. It is one of the biggest bicycling clubs (in terms of membership) in the world. There are more than 3000 apartments in Cyberabad and the employees could take their bicycles to work. Some IT companies are willing to provide premium parking to employees coming by bicycles. As of now HMR has sponsored 300 cycles and GHMC will be sponsoring the bike stations and infrastructure. As every project has some initial setbacks we too have run into few. Railways is yet to give us some land for the project as there are no government lands in these areas. Initally we started this concept to encourage people to keep themselves healthy and as a morning exercise but the tremendous response has encouraged us to expand the operations to 40 kms radius in Hitex Station,” said Raj.

There are many more local benefits of the biking economy, from lowering families’ health care costs to reducing a business’s need to invest in costly parking spaces for staff and customers. And you can’t place a monetary value on happiness.