For a comfortable and safe journey

Commut, a Hyderabad-based start-up, is offering commuters a comfortable, safe and pocket-friendly travel to work in a greenway

Commut is a Hyderabad-based start-up which runs mini-buses connecting major areas in Secunderabad and Hyderabad with Hi-Tec City to get rid of traffic woes for denizens and employees. Commut was founded in November 2015 by 6 alumni from IIIT-Hyderabad. The founders are Prasanth Garapati, Hemanth Jonalagadda, Charan Thota, Srujai Varikuti, Sandeep Kachavarapu and Akshay Chennupati.

Commut provides nearly 1,500 rides between 7am to 8pm, every day. More than 60 percent of their customers are women and they have special security services for women like Hawkeye tool for surveillance.

The idea of Commut was born from the daily travel experiences of Hemanth (one of the founders). He joined an MNC immediately after college and had to travel every day from LB Nagar to Gachibowli.

During this period, he realised there was a huge gap between travel options available and the need. The only way to commute is either app-based taxis which demanded huge splurge of cash or public transportation - which were 200% full and uncomfortable to travel. He discussed this with his friends from IIIT and started Commut in Nov 2015.

“In Urban India, the population is growing at an alarming rate. By 2021 it is projected that 51 cities in India will have a population of above 1 million. The existing infrastructure is unable to cope up with this.

There is no proper mode of transportation for almost 35% of the 115 million commuters every day in Urban India; while the rest are either splurging money by traveling on cars and app-based taxis or traveling uncomfortably on public transportation that runs with above 200% occupancy during peak hours.

The first of these two contribute immensely to the increased traffic and pollution too resulting in being a health-hazard to the urban population. Also, almost 50% of the women commuters have raised concerns about their safety with the existing modes of transportation,” said Hemanth Jonalagadda.

“Commut is a Hyderabad-based mass transit start-up aiming to solve all these issues by offering commuters a comfortable, safe and pocket-friendly travel to work in a green way! Our tech platform enables users to reserve their seat for a specific pickup and drop point.

The Intelligent Demand Recognition System (IDRS) built by us helps us understand the demand requirements of the commuters and add-on routes accordingly – balancing the demand and supply proportionately. We also provide employee transportation services to the corporates which have proven to be extremely cost-effective, time-effective and resource-effective to the corporates,” said Prasanth Garapati.

Until today, Commut has served 50,000+ registered customers to date and helped in reduction of 440+ tonnes of CO2 emissions (by bringing more people into lesser vehicles). 60% of their daily traveler are women (as per recent WRI survey) which is way higher than public transportation (3% of the customers are women).

In October 2017, Commute was recognised by MAN Accelerator program (Man Trucks in collaboration with Yunus Social Business) as one of the top 8 Social Logistics start-ups in the world. They were also chosen among the top 10 start-ups of Hyderabad in April 2016 and received the award of Best Impact Start-up of Hyderabad.

“Right now, we are present only in Hyderabad. We want to expand throughout the market before entering a new city,” said Prasanth Garapati.