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Ridesharing: A new spice for digital dab

Tuesday, 11 July 2017


RIDESHARING is the sharing of vehicles by passengers to reduce vehicle trips, traffic congestion and carbon emissions. This service is commonly referred to as real-time ridesharing, and is provided by transportation network companies such as Lyft, Uber, and Sidecar. In Bangladesh the concept of ridesharing is relatively new but has already become the talk of the time. Mostly members of the young generation in cities are excited about it. Uber, an American ridesharing service, is their main attraction which has been recently launched in capital Dhaka. There are also some local entrepreneurs (some backed by foreign VCs) entering the ride-sharing business. Some of these services are very good. They provide premium ride quality and levels of service. Some of these few locals are Pathao, Garivara, Taxiwala, Amar Bike, Cholo etc.  
Almost all these local options including Uber is app-based and so having the internet connection is a must. However, one of the drawbacks of the service is that it lacks a set of well designed policy regulations. For this reason, the service often faces the challenges in many countries and even gets marked with a "banned" or "illegal" tag. Nevertheless, the ridesharing service, through its unconventional and smart operating process is taking us one step closer to its vision of making a digital Bangladesh.
Sanjana Tonima
East West University
[email protected]