Shuttle

I am an entrepreneur and avid self-learner who is passionate about using his skills to solve social problems through innovation and redesign. My passion for entrepreneurship led me to co-found Shuttle, a startup that addresses and aims to solve a pressing issue in Bangladesh – safe transportation for women.

For my efforts in the transportation sector, I was selected as the winner of the Young Achiever of the Year 2019 award by the Bangladesh branch of Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport.

I previously worked at Robi Axiata Limited as a Product Specialist for two years.

I am a business graduate from North South University (NSU) where I led the successful establishment of NSU Finance Club as the Founding President.

I am also an Ambassador at One Young World and a Global Shaper at World Economic Forum and was awarded a certificate in New Ventures Leadership by MIT in 2018.

A study conducted by the development organization “BRAC” shows that 94% women commuting in public transport in Bangladesh have experienced sexual harassment in verbal, physical and other forms. At Shuttle, we want to solve this problem.

Shuttle is a mass-transit startup that provides safe transportation at an affordable price by moving more people with fewer vehicles with the help of technology and primarily focuses on solving the transportation problem for women in Bangladesh. The service is provided in air-conditioned mini-vans where 10-11 women can commute together by paying less than one-fourth of Uber cars.  Using data, we project demand and design the most efficient routes possible to ensure a smooth experience for our customers.

Our goal is to ensure that each and every woman in Bangladesh has the freedom to commute wherever and whenever they want to.

For decades, transportation has been a huge problem for the women of Bangladesh and other developing countries. A study done by BRAC shows that 94% women commuting in public transport in Bangladesh have experienced physical, verbal, or some other form of sexual harassment. Because of this, almost half of the population of Bangladesh (84 mln) do not have the freedom to commute whenever or wherever they want. They always need a male family member/relative/friend to accompany them. Moreover, the number of buses in cities like Dhaka is not sufficient to cater the demand of the ever-growing population and hence, we regularly see cases where females get injured because of the vehicle being over crowded. On the other hand, using taxi or ride-sharing services for everyday commute is too expensive for most people in Bangladesh. Hence, women either have to choose unsafe public transport or decide not to commute at all especially when no family member is able to accompany them. This acts as a very big hurdle to the dreams of any female who dares to do something for herself or her country.

Shuttle is a mass-transit startup that provides safe transportation at an affordable price by moving more people with fewer vehicles with the help of technology and primarily focuses on solving the transportation problem for women in Bangladesh. The service is provided in air-condition mini-vans where 10-11 women can commute together by paying less than one-fourth of the fare of Uber Cars.

Shuttle runs of specific routes with specific pick-up points and maintains a fixed schedule. A trip manager (other than the driver) is assigned in every single vehicle whose primary responsibility is to ensure passenger safety. 

We are a platform that caters to both B2B and B2C customers and have a hybrid business model combining these two for revenue synergies. Using data, we project demand and design the most efficient routes possible to ensure a smooth experience for our customers. To ensure safety of our passengers, we constantly track all our vehicles and monitor the trips with the help of technology. We also have an emergency hotline which is always open so that our customers can contact whenever they face any problem. 

Realizing the dire need to solve the transportation problem for women in Dhaka, we started talking to female university-going students and corporate women and tried to identify their real pain-points. After doing a thorough analysis, we came up with the idea of Shuttle. We launched the pilot project in July 2018 among few selected universities just to test if customers would actually find it useful. To our surprise, we received tremendous response from our initial users. This boosted our confidence and now we are expanding rapidly to cater more people. We are currently operating on 10 routes in Dhaka City and completed more than 600,000 successful rides so far. If we only consider our primary target market which is female students and office-goers within the age group of 15-44 in the urban areas of Bangladesh, we have a total addressable market of annual $2.5 billion.

We have a closed Facebook group where our customers share their Shuttle experiences and let us know whenever they face any problem. Our team also talks to more than 700 customers each day to take feedback. By providing a safe and affordable transportation solution, we are ensuring that women in Dhaka can commute without fear!

All three of us (co-founders of Shuttle) grew up in Dhaka and we have observed first-hand how the public transportation is a mess in our country and especially for women. Women in Bangladesh do not feel safe commuting alone. I myself had to accompany my sister when she used to commute by public transport. Then, during our university days, we have seen how our female friends needed us to accompany them because they were scared about their safety. A study done by the development organization BRAC shows that 94% women commuting in public transport in Bangladesh have experienced sexual harassment. Realizing the dire need to solve this problem, we started talking to our female friends and relatives and tried to identify their real-pain points. Based on their feedback, we came up with the idea of Shuttle – a safe and affordable transportation solution for women in Bangladesh. We initially started the service only in our university for our female friends. After the tremendous response that we received from the initial users, we kept growing and expanding. 

From an early age, I was fascinated seeing how certain individuals shaped and changed the world around us for the better. It was obvious to me that entrepreneurship is the key to generate such meaningful change. Since then I have grown a passion for solving problems of our society through innovation and redesign.

I grew up in Dhaka and since my childhood, I have experienced first-hand the problems with public transportation in Bangladesh. I personally never felt comfortable using public transportation and have always preferred other transportation options even though those were not as cheap. Like many other developing countries, our public transportation system lacks automation or system. The total number of buses are also not sufficient to cater the needs of ever-growing population. The problem is more severe for women. Sexual harassment in public transportation is a regular occurrence in Bangladesh. I myself had to accompany my sister whenever she used to commute by public transport. Then, during our university days, my partners and I have seen how our female friends needed us to accompany them because they were scared about their safety. The dire need to solve this problem motivated us to start Shuttle.  

I am a business graduate and I majored in Finance & Economics. During my university days, I, as the Founding President, led the successful establishment of the NSU Finance Club and was able to make it the most popular club in the university (829 people applied for membership) within 12 months of establishment.

After graduation, I worked in Robi Axiata Ltd., the second largest telecommunication company in Bangladesh, as a Product Specialist for two years where I was responsible for strategizing voice-product offerings and leading end-to-end product management through multi-functional (technology, finance, marketing, etc.) collaborations.

In 2018, I was selected as one of the 120 innovators from all over the world to attend MIT Innovation & Entrepreneurship Bootocamp in Rio de Janeiro where we were taught how to turn an idea into a startup within a week.

Now, as the CEO at Shuttle, my expertise and responsibilities are strategy, finance, business development, fundraising, and maintaining investor relationship. One of my partners specialize in operations and marketing and the other has a tech background.

One of the biggest advantage that we have at Shuttle is that we, the leadership team (three co-founders), have been working full-time at Shuttle for more than 27 months. The level of connections, insights and knowledge about the industry that we have gained give us a huge leverage.

All these experiences, expertise and our background of growing up in Bangladesh and observing the problem first-hand since childhood make us the perfect team to solve this problem.

When we initially on-boarded our first investor, they wanted majority stake (51%) in the business and we agreed due to our lack of experience in the startup ecosystem. Later, when you started talking to potential investors for further funds, everyone kept rejecting us because of the shareholding structure of the business. In one instance, an investor who offered us $600,000 funding pulled off at the last moment because of the same reason. My entire team got really demotivated and depressed. However, we never gave up. We knew that we had to persevere and solve this issue if we wanted to scale our business. Hence, we started talking to our existing investor and kept trying to make them understand the situation. After 9 months of perseverance, we were able to convince them to reduce their stake to 21% from 51%. Not only that, soon after, we have been able to raise $400,000 investment to continue our growth.   

When I joined my university, there was no platform for finance majors in my university to showcase their skills, apply the things learnt in class in real life or interact with industry professionals. My friends who were majoring in Finance also felt the same problem, but they did not know how to address it. Hence, I decided to start a club for the finance students. In my university, it was very difficult to start a new club by students because of bureaucracy. I have had several discussions with the university authorities regarding the club, but no one was willing to actively support us. Then I decided to try a different approach. I convinced 73 bright minds of our batch to join the club before it was even established. We then started organizing workshops and events unofficially. These events were highly appreciated not only by the students, but also by the finance professionals who attended the events as guests. We then convinced some of our finance faculties to help the members develop their skills. At this point, the faculties started vouching for us and worked with us together to get official approval from the university authority.