On-demand driver booking app
Drivify, operated by Mumbai-based startup DR Mobility Solutions Pvt. Ltd, has raised $50,000 (Rs 33.75 lakh) in seed funding from Citrus Pay founder Jitendra Gupta and a high net-worth individual Pankaj Tripathi.
The app despite being just a little over 2 months old now has managed a loyal following amongst car users in Mumbai. Drivify is a state of the art mobile app which allows vehicle owners a reliable, instant and an economical solution for booking on demand drivers.
Drivify was incepted as DR Mobility Solutions Pvt Ltd in May 2015 between Prasad Shriyan & Jatin Kamdar.
Prasad & Jatin both quit their high profile jobs to follow their entrepreneurial passion and develop a solution that addresses a problem felt by many other car owners. Prasad till sometime back was serving one the largest Travel companies in the country in a leadership role and would often spend close over 3 hours daily on the city roads commuting from his residence in the western suburbs to South Mumbai. He says, “I love my car and I like driving, and I never really was comfortable with the idea of having a full time driver for my car. I would end up calling a temporary driver at least 4 or 5 times in a month to drive me home after a party or when I had to go for a meeting where I knew parking would be an issue. Now, the experience of booking that driver was not very easy. Negotiations with driver agencies, false commitments on turn around, guiding the driver over call to the place where you need him, driver not turning up, under skilled drivers, arbitrary charging etc. made the entire process very discouraging. Solution to the pain was more pain. I struggled to understand why driver-booking should be so difficult when you can book a cab within seconds and get a service in a matter of minutes. I think that’s where the idea for Drivify was born between Jatin & me. The fact that a lot of our friends were facing similar problem strengthened our resolve to address this service issue in the market.”
Jatin comes from HR & Admin background who before cofounding Drivify with Prasad used to manage the HR function for an organization which was into Aircraft Research and Maintenance. “Just like Prasad, even I would spend a considerable amount of time of the roads. While I didn’t have a challenge driving to work in the morning, I would end up calling for temporary drivers on my way back from work. I have bitter experiences of trusting the driver with my car who couldn’t even get into gear correctly. On one occasion, I made the driver sit in the passenger seat and drove myself till I found the roads safe for him to drive. We all read about the Audi drink & drive incident in the Central suburbs last year which got a lot of media attention. For someone so educated and who could spend few thousands on their dinner bill, what could have been the reason to take that chance on the wheel inebriated? Many say complete disrespect for law & other's lives. Or it could have been lack of a convenient, reliable and a prompt service.
Prasad and I go back 6 years. So it didn’t take long for us to commit ourselves to this opportunity. We knew how to solve the problem, had the resources to build it and the ability to take it to the market.”
Drivify’s focus has been on instant delivery, simplicity of booking, customer safety, transparency in delivery timelines, billing and ease of payment. The mobile app on google playstore has a +4.9 customer satisfaction rating. Within 75 days of launch the app has been downloaded over 3000 times, arguably a testimony of success for a mobile app in the transportation segment.
Prasad adds “We started off with a survey amongst car owners to understand what would be of most value from a driver on demand solution. We heard turnaround time, reliability, security, competence, economical and payment options… These eventually became the pillars on which Drivify continues to scale wider and taller. The experience of booking a driver through Drivify is similar to booking a cab using a mobile app. Our app doesn’t just take your request. We offer instant confirmation with driver details, let you track your driver on a map within the app, enable the driver to reach you without the need for any calls & pay for your service through the app.
We’ve barely spent anything on advertising our product. Customers are discovering us online or being promoted by our existing customers. Our turnaround time from +1700 trips over the last 75 days is in the range of 40 - 50 minutes from customer request time till the driver reaches the customer. Our app barely requires any manual intervention and directly connects the car owner to the right-skilled driver. Driver is allocated basis his proximity to the car owner and his ability to operate the customers’ car which comes from the customer profile.
Our drivers come through referrals and go through a lot a screening. A leading 3rd party back ground verification company does residence checks, national id validation and criminal background checks on every driver who clears skill assessment. His credentials to the driver app are issued only after the background verification reports are positive. They are trained on communication, soft skills and driver etiquettes before they are put on the job.
Our objective is to the best there is or there ever will be in this category. For that it’s important that we have the best resources to serve our customers. Our experience of managing customer experience for leading brands in the past is in many ways helping us maintain a high level of satisfaction. We don’t have to work on it like most others do. It comes naturally to us!”
