How more Indians are carpooling to cut the costs of office commute

livemint.com:

The covid pandemic is over and it’s now business as usual. Cities have sprung back to life as people return to office. And, so have the huge traffic snarls, as people travel from home to office and back during rush hour. Meanwhile, young professionals are looking for cost-efficient and convenient ways to commute to their offices. Many of them are carpooling to hitch a more comfortable ride.

Carpool refers to a group of car owners who take turns to drive everyone in the group to work, so that only one car is used at a time. To be sure, the advent of carpool apps now allows strangers to join such groups as long as they are travelling in the same direction. Mint spoke with a few office-goers who are carpooling to save on fuel costs, hefty taxi fares and travel time. Besides, it gives them the opportunity to interact with co-passengers and improve their networking.

Carpooling apps

Hridika Roy, 26, who hails from Kolkata and works in Bengaluru, has been using the carpooling app Quick Ride for the last 10-11 months. Roy, a techie employed at Microsoft as user-experience (UX) researcher, is required to work from office twice a week.

Roy, whose office is 14km away from her residence, says carpooling is a blessing because of the heavy traffic on Bengaluru roads and the long journey. Buses could take more than two hours and she has to change three buses to reach her destination. Cabs are very costly. She says it costs anywhere between ₹350-500 for each leg of the journey by cabs.

With the car-pooling app, Roy needs to pay just ₹65-70 in one direction. Since she works from office only twice a week, it costs her ₹1,080- ₹1,120 every month. Using cabs both ways would have cost her ₹5,600-8,000.

But is travelling with strangers