RASAI

With more than 6.7 billion people expected to live in cities by 2050, the unprecedented growth makes it impossible for the required infrastructure to keep up to pace.
This problem is especially relevant for the transportation infrastructure as often it is expensive and time consuming to layout and a delay in which causes designed cities to loose their skeleton and devolve into slums and transit desserts necessitating private car use.

RASAI leverages already available spare capacity of vehicles on the road to act as a feeder route system to augment or even replace/leap-frog conventional fixed line transit systems, enabling a smart dynamic network which can increase accessibility and efficiency of transit networks at practically no additional cost while decreasing congestion, pollution and increasing walking,transit use and open spaces.
The solution is implemented through online channels and AI-Route optimization back-end making it highly scalable at a very low cost. 

By 2075 the 10 most populous cities will all be from developing developing world, with already dire resources and rapid influx of people. These cities face great difficulty in providing  affordable mobility to the people, consequently people reside as close as they can to city centers thus forming congested slums leading to associated negative consequences.

Fixed Line Transit Options are not only expensive and time-taking to build but are not able to cater to the rapidly grown demand thus having limited utility. In Islamabad, Pakistan Rs.130 Billion were spent on building of just 2 BRT lines over a span of a decade and yet it only catered to less then 2.3% of the cities population.

Lack of Public transit infrastructure and reliance on private vehicles can lead to problems such as obesity, pollution, stress of driving in congestion, stress of high cost of commute, lack of open spaces to make more room for roads as well as time wasted behind the wheel.

RASAI is connecting transit desserts (suburbs, slums, refugee encampments) places with very low accessibility with the main transit network forming a city wide network. With more than 60.3% of the population living on less than $2 per day in Pakistan and a single cab ride as much as $3-6. Affordability has been the main motivator for people to adopt the solution.

Almost 80% of our users have been women, as women are often seen having to spend upto 35% of their monthly income just on commute. We have been able to save more than 30% of this cost through RASAI.
Additionally we have noticed that people don't necessarily want to live in city centers as the costs are high and quality of life may be poorer but to save on commute costs have to do so, with the implementation of our solution now many have been able to live in better areas and work at city center.

RASAI is able to make transit system more accessible and effective by allowing cars with spare capacity to share their seats with travelers headed the same way, though similar to carpooling it is able to drastically improve the odds of matching by integrating the Public transit stations into the itinerary as a stopover point/ hub for redistribution and optimizing through an AI Route optimization algorithm thus increasing the availability of options and efficiency.
A routine commuter with a car is able to register his/her route, time and seats available on monthly basis for additional income through the app, website and whatsapp. This route is fed into the overall network and optimized with the AI optimization engine and the demand of the monthly commute option seekers are matched with the driver to the transit line station on the way.
This greatly enhances the accessibility of the overall transit network, reducing the numbers of vehicles required thus the congestion and the pollution due to emissions additionally users are able to save majority of their commute cost versus driving themselves and reduce the fatigue of driving thus reducing accidents whilst also getting the recommended amount of walk daily for walking to the pickup point and eventually enjoying more open spaces due to less requirement of roads.

RASAI can be thought of Transit 2.0 or carpooling 2.0 as a Dynamic an integrated dynamic transit network it combines Mass Transit and carpooling in a way to compliment each other and utilizes latest advances in AI based optimization to yield the most efficient distribution over the network.

Transit system on thier own needed to rely on feeder routes which themselves were a huge cost to operate and still had limited coverage as suburbs and slums were often ignored thus limiting coverage of the overall network.
Carpooling is innately difficult to implement within cities due to lack of point to point matches. less than 5% would match even with a window of 30 mins.
but by allowing passengers to stop over and switch at a transit station the matching jumps up to 60-70%.

This is the first time that such a model has been applied and it's addresses the last mile gaps as well as well as increasing the utility of limited transit infrastructure making it highly suited for rapidly developing cities.

RASAI's technology utilizes Deep Learning Algorithms to analyze and  predict demand to make the most effective matches over the transit network. Multiple factors such as time of the day, locations available supply, predicted demand, road condition uncertainties are catered into the system to make the best decision.
This complexity is made very simple to the users as we allow users to register their route or put in their commute requests over phone/sms/whatsapp/app and web. 

We believe that current fixed line transit model by itself is extortionately expensive and inefficient without widespread coverage, which majority of the fastest growing cities can't afford thus require an innovation which RASAI is able to offer to augment the provision of accessible and affordable mobility.

Transit is instrumental in the way cities grow and functions.

1) Help reduce lack of affordable housing as effective transit helps reduce burden on city centers.

2) Improve Air quality as congestion is reduced by using less vehicles more efficiently, thus improving Health of citizens.

3) Help reduce obesity as reliance on private vehicles reduces and 10-20 min of daily walk is promoted in routine of the citizens.

4)Reduce Stress and fatigue of driving in congestion, also helping to reduce accidents.

5) Promote open spaces as less roads required for motor vehicles.

At the moment we are serving more than 3500 customers through multiple channels such as rasai.pk and pickdrop.pk in Rawalpindi and Islamabad, Pakistan.

We hope to be serving Millions in 5 years serving in Asia-Pacific and Africa.

In the next year we hope to expand all over pakistan as with a population of 200 million and less than 17 vehicles /1000 people the need is immense combined with a dysfunctional/non existent public transport system in all major cities.

In the next 5 years, We hope to experiment with Virtual Bus Stops and leap frogging the need for infrastructure dependent Transit Options and expanding to African countries. 

As we are focused on providing the most cost effective means of travel. We keep very little profits from the model to expand thus funding restraints at the moment are limiting us from executing at full potential.

Cultural aspects of allowing women to use public transport alone is a barrier that is gradually being reduced as more and more women see each other utilizing the service.

As critical mass is achieved margins automatically improve thus we can be cash flow positive even while expanding.

Through better marketing and awareness we hope to improve the culture of allowing freedom of mobility for women.

We are currently a team of 8 full time members, consisting of software engineers, operations, marketing and transportation expertise. 

We believe in the change that implementation of this model can bring for billions around the world and how dramatically it can improve the environment and daily routine of the masses.

We have been supported by UNEP, USAID, National Incubation Center,Isb(Best Bootstrapped Startup), Jazz Xlr8(Accelerator) and RARE.org. 

We charge a small 5% commission from the supply side (car owner).

We have limited expense of server costs which are covered by AWS, Salaries and majority is spent on expansion. Once critical mass of 5000 users is reached we are to be cash flow positive.