- rPool has been developed with the objective of contributing to decongestion and reduction of pollution in cities
- Offers a very economical, easy and systematic daily commute option for Delhiites
redBus, the world’s largest online bus ticketing platform, announces the launch of rPool, a Carpooling and Bikepooling service on its platform, in Delhi today. This new service allows office goers in the national capital to avail and offer rides in their personal cars and bikes, while commuting between home and their workplace. rPool can be accessed directly from within the redBus mobile app.
rPool has emerged from the need to develop sustainable solutions for the growing demand for intra-city commute, while also emphasising on reduction in vehicular congestion and pollution. All major cities in India, including Delhi, have witnessed a sharp rise in the number of privately owned two and four wheelers, over the last 4-5 years, resulting in severe cramming, impacting the quality of life, environment and the economy. While investments in public infrastructure, including metros and buses are underway, the spurt in economic activity far outpaces their development, calling for a quick, simple and sustainable solution to keep up with the rising demand for daily commute. redBus believes in the concept of ‘shared mobility’, as a sustainable option to tackling this situation, with vehicle pooling being one of the best solutions.
According to the TomTom Traffic Index, residents of Delhi lost over a week’s time, stuck in rush hour traffic in 2019, compared to a little over three days in Las Vegas, despite residents in the American city covering nearly six times as much distance in their vehicles. Delhi had 11.2 million vehicles on its roads in 2018, growing at an average rate of about 7.6% over the five preceding years. And according to a report published by BCG, traffic congestion is estimated to have cost the city about 12% of its GDP, or about $9.6 billion.
rPool
Integrated into the redBus app, rPool is a sophisticated carpool and bikepool solution for working professionals, enabling them to offer and avail rides, between their homes and offices. It uses advanced technology to connect ride givers and ride takers in the fastest and most convenient manner possible. The matching algorithm ensures that ride givers don’t have to deviate or take any detours from their daily work route and ride takers get to travel the maximum distance of their commute as a part of the shared ride.
Features of rPool:
● Verified Profiles via multiple checks: In order to build a trusted community of ride givers and ride takers, rPool is restricted to working professionals undertaking daily commute. Users are verified through their mobile number and their organization’s corporate email id/govt. approved id.
● Safe, secure and, private: redBus has introduced phone number masking which enables users to connect with each other via the redBus app without revealing their phone numbers to each other thus ensuring privacy. Also, women commuters can choose to book rides with women ride givers only, for enhanced safety.
● Attractive Incentives: Ride givers receive incentives in the form of reward points that can be redeemed at fuel stations and Amazon Pay. Ride takers pay much less than autos/cabs for the same distance.
● User profiles and feedback mechanism: Creation of user profiles based on user reviews, allowing participants the option of choosing the people they wish to travel with, based on their ratings.
● Insurance for all riders: rPool also covers its rides through complementary insurance provided by its insurance partner in case of accident.
With the right implementation and adoption at scale, carpooling can significantly reduce vehicular traffic during peak hours in urban cities. Research suggests that if 4 people share a car for 10 Kilometres, about 4 to 5 litres of fuel could be saved, thus reducing CO2 emissions by 9 to 11 Kgs. With a growing user base for redBus in the north, especially in NCR, the company is poised to scale rPool at pace, positively impacting urban commute in Delhi.
redBus has registered strong growth in the north and west regions over the last one year, with about 37% of its revenues coming from here in Q3. This is largely attributed to promotional campaigns with the company’s brand ambassador, M S Dhoni, redBus is thus a pan-India brand today. Some of the tier 1 and 2 cities that have contributed to the growth in the north are Delhi, Lucknow, Kanpur, Agra and Dehradun. The busiest and high demand route for bus travel in the north, is between Lucknow and Delhi. redBus is associated with 2600+ private bus operators and 23 RTCs across India, catering to about 2 lakh+ people daily. redBus has also launched, ‘On-Time Guarantee’ (OTG) in Delhi, a feature that offers monetary compensation to passengers whose buses fail to depart on time.
redBus
redBus was founded in 2006 in India and today is the world’s largest online bus ticketing platform. After having solved complex problems of bus customers in India, redBus also launched operations in Singapore and Malaysia in 2015 and acquired a majority stake in Peru based bus ticketing platform Busportal (now redBus.Pe) in the subsequent year. With this acquisition, redBus successfully launched operations in Latin America markets, Peru & shortly thereafter, Colombia.
redBus has globally sold more than 180 million bus tickets till date and has a customer base of around 20 million users. redBus is now part of the MakeMyTrip group (Nasdaq, MMYT) which is the largest travel aggregator in India with offerings across categories such as Flights, Hotels, Holiday Packages, etc.
The business owns three products - redBus™, redProWin™ and redBus Partner™, which come together to serve and address the fragmented bus industry across geographies.
●redBus™ is the popular consumer-facing travel brand enabling customers to buy bus tickets online. Consumers, depending on where they live, can access redBus on the web (redbus.in, redbus.my, redbus.sg, redbus.
● redProWin™ is a cloud-based solution built for bus operators. Approximately 2500+ bus operators in India, SEA and Latin America use this platform for their day to day operations. The revolutionary inventory management software ensures seat realization and resource utilization, thus improving revenue and profitability for bus operators. Over the years, through the use of engineering & data analytics, redBus has offered features such as LIVE bus tracking, dynamic pricing, customer relationship management, etc., which have helped bus operators improve operational efficiency as well as service quality.
●redBus Partner™ is a GDS for bus inventory distribution and is used by more than 20,000 retail agents and 200+ OTAs to sell bus tickets to their customers.
27, 2020
New Delhi, February 27, 2020
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