Why Lakshna Jha deserves #DigitalWomenAwards?
The world is changing rapidly and so is the traffic in today’s world. There may be different working hours but the vehicles on the road are always on a high. Have you ever wondered that most of the cars have only one person as the driver of the car? Even if you take a cab, you are mostly travelling alone and the rest of the vehicle is vacant. Yes, I know you are thinking of carpooling which is a brilliant idea. But the percentage is too low because people are not able to connect well with other commuters looking for carpool. This is when Lakshna Jha thought of an idea to introduce an app called sRide.co. Let’s talk to her personally and know the real reason behind such a powerful initiative.
Lakshna Jha in her own words
Q 1) Tell us a little about your educational background.
I did my B.Tech. from NSIT Delhi and my MBA in Columbia Busines School, New York.
Q 2) Around two decades, traffic is deteriorating each day. When did you get this idea of making a carpool app?
In 2014, I used to travel to Hinjewadi, Pune and the traffic was very bad. In peak times it took 1.5hours for travelling 5kms. All cars and bikes on road had empty seats. Thousands of people are going to and leaving the same office complex in the peak hours of 8-11 am and 5-8 pm to the same residential areas. The utilisation of the vehicles was very low while making roads and bridges need crores of Rs and years to build. I believed if we could make it easy to carpool, it will change the way India commutes. 55% of our riders are women helping in mobility for women and women empowerment.
Q 3) You have always been connected to technology. So did you design this app yourself?
Yes, the app was designed by me along with the co-founders.
Q 4) How did you find the best people for your team?
The team is the core of the success of a startup. We believe in having a small team like WhatsApp which had 35 people only when they sold to Facebook but we hire the best in industry. Most of our initial team members were the people we had worked in past and all of them have been with us now for 4+years. Even today, we hire a lot through referrals. A lot of sRide users have also joined sRide from our postings as they feel very proud to join an app that is impacting the lives of millions.
Q 5) How did you make the world aware of this app? What was the initial success rate?
We spread the word of carpool by organic word of mouth, tying up with 500+ companies like Infosys, Wipro, Capgemini, using digital media like google facebook. Organic word of mouth is 80% of our user acquisition.
Q 6) How do you feel to be helpful to society and the environment? Now, what’s next on your mind?
Today there are 20M personal cars and 140N bikes on road. These cars each have 3 seats and hence 60M empty seats in cars and 140M in bikes with a total of 200M empty seats to be filled. Carpooling will go a long way in reducing vehicles on road, congestion and pollution. Carpooling is a need for every country and our vision is to make sRide a global brand.
Is there safety around the people meeting through this app? How does one ensure that there will be no spam?
We have the following safety features
- Mandatory Phone number OTP and work email verified from reputed companies
- User has the choice to select who they want to go with
- Every ride has to be reviewed by other riders
- SOS feature
- Tracking for the rides
- Option to hide phone number
- Add emergency contact
And this how an individual thought became a big change in the way we travel. Sooner or later, the whole world is going to adapt to this positive change.
Thank you, Lakshna for sharing your success story with all of us.
Blogchatter is honoured to be associated to SheThePeopleTV as online media partner hosting #DigitalWomenAwards. You can get event passes from here.
