Frustrated with traffic snarls in the city, a bunch of IT professionals joined forces to set up the employee transportation company Commut. It’s a mobile-based minibus shuttle service for daily office commuters.
Founded in November 2015 by IIIT-ians Prashanth Garapati, Hemanth Jonnalagadda and Sandeep Kachavarapu, Commut enables users to book a ride from a specific pickup to a specific drop point. And in a span of just five months, the company claims to be clocking over 700 daily rides and has served over 45,000 happy commuters with a fleet of 42 mini bus shuttles.
“Travelling from Dilsukhnagar to Hitec City for work everyday was so frustrating. I had no option but to wait for long hours or book a cab, not to forget the surge pricing in peak times – Rs 500-600 for long distances,” says Hemanth, adding, “After discussions and a thorough background research, we decided to solve the complex situation of mass commutation ourselves and started Commut.”
Commut works by automating end-to-end transportation; the app lets employees track their rides in real time. The system also provides a mechanism to address women’s safety. For instance, there is a live tracking, emergency contact in the app, which alerts the management when triggered.
“Every day more than 4 lakh IT professionals commute to work in Hyderabad. Around 30 per cent are young women for whom security is a major concern. Moreover, an average urban dweller spends almost 1/6th of his life on the road and the existing transport options are very cumbersome and exhaustive,” says Prasanth.
He says, “Commut is solving office commuting problems very effectively and also doing its bit to save the environment by cutting down pollution, congestion and parking problems by getting more people in fewer vehicles.”
Commut recently raised seed funding from 50K Ventures; and Sudhakar Reddy, co-founder of RedBus, joined the board. The team plans to cover the entire city in the upcoming months.
