Following is an Interview between The Business Fame Magazine and KNM Rao, who shares her journey and contribution through Quick Ride.
Q. Tell us something about your company and its services.
Started in 2015, Quick Ride, helps every car owner to build a carpooling culture and enable the urban commuters to start sharing the empty seats in their car with colleagues. We enable commuters to use technology in order to discover, connect and route-match with other carpoolers in a seamless and automated manner. Quick Ride automates end to end process of carpooling and makes it feasible for the urban commuter.
The inspiration behind the idea came from the severe parking crunch we faced at our respective offices. We would see people chasing each other to find a parking spot in the office. While at the same a number of people would wait at the reception to get the company cab home. A number of employees were also travelling to and fro the same route or destination, but were hesitant to offer rides. It was then, that the idea struck us, to develop a fully automated way for employees to carpool and offer rides to one another. The plan slowly developed over time and came to life. Once we figured that an idea like this could be implementable and had the potential to make a huge social and environmental impact, we quit our jobs and started Quick Ride.
We also wanted to empower the concept of ‘Urban Shared Mobility’ aimed at decongesting and reducing pollution in today’s developing cities. While most of us are aware of carpooling, we do not practice it either because of issues in coordination or lack of good carpooling matches. Quick Ride started with an aim to help every car owner to build a carpooling culture and enable the urban commuters to start sharing the empty seats in their car or bike with colleagues.
Q. Tell us something about the Founder/CEO, and how he/she deals with current problems related to the Startup world.
My name is KNM Rao and I am the CEO and Founder of Quick Ride. I have over 20 years of work experience in the field of product development and have worked with the likes of companies such as Philips, Cisco & Huawei. My expertise lies in end-to-end middleware platform development, Agile, Kanban and Project Management Building Distributed Computing platform for large-scale data storage & processing authored various papers on Agile Practice deployment and quality improvement programs. I was the director – Engineering at Huawei and have extensive experience in delivery leader position with cross functional and end to end execution ownership from concept to delivery of telecom software platforms.
Q. What is the present scenario of the Startup ? How are you contributing to making it better?
The challenge in a developing country like India is centered on traffic congestion, lack of solutions for the rising population and end-to-end connectivity. Majority of the daily commuters in urban cities travel to & from their workplace in their cars that are occupied by one person only. This has led to a surge in traffic density on our roads leading to elevated levels of congestion & pollution. Alternate means of commutation are inconvenient, untimely or expensive. The only sustainable solution is for the commuters themselves to become awakened citizens and carpool on their daily commute, thereby, addressing these challenges and contributing to the economy.
Apart from the above reasons, the ride sharing space has the capability of transformational changes. These changes which can turn out to be socially and environmentally beneficially to our entire society. So, this is our way of making me considerable difference in the world.
Q. What are the marketing strategies adopted by company?
Quick Ride marketing strategy is unique and it focuses on building carpooling culture than just downloading the product. Quick Ride has worked with seven out of the top ten IT Companies. We have conducted specially designed ‘Green Commuting Campaign’ across 150+ companies including WIPRO, Cognizant, Infosys, IBM, Capgemini, HCL, TCS, and Others. Today we are receiving tremendous response from all segments such as Product, Service companies and Co working spaces. We have executed carpooling campaigns at key areas such as Embassy Tech Parks, Prestige Tech Parks, etc. As per Mr. Pradeep Lala, CEO – Embassy Services, Car occupancy in Manyata has improved by 21% after implementing the carpooling initiative.
Q. How do you portray the future of company in the next decade?
Quick Ride is operational in major metro cities such as Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Pune, Trivandrum and Kochi. The goal is to create 1 Million carpooler networks in each metro city for hassle free commuting. Our vision is to increase the awareness about carpooling among Indian citizens and corporates and become the preferred mode for daily commute. Today, motor vehicles are significant contributors to the poor air quality. Our goal is to reduce one million car off the roads every day, thus, contributing to decongestion and reducing the pollution levels by removing at least 5000 Ton Carbon Emission every day. We will continue to expand across all the developing cities in India to enable a hassle free travel for commuters.
