Shuttle

A study conducted by 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 an app based pick and drop transportation service only for women that aims to provide safe, affordable, and comfortable transportation for all women in Bangladesh.

Shuttle runs on specific routes with specific pick-up points. We provide the service in air-conditioned mini-vans where 10-11 women can commute together which makes the service affordable and reduces traffic jam. A verified Trip Manager (other than the driver) is assigned in every vehicle whose primary responsibility is to ensure passengers’ safety.

We are currently operating on 7 routes in Dhaka and providing around 1,200 rides/day. Our goal is to ensure each and every woman in the world has the freedom to commute wherever and whenever they want!

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) and other developing countries 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 developing countries. 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.

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 7 routes in Dhaka City and providing more than 1,200 rides/day. If we consider the female university students and corporate women within the age group of 18-35 only in two major cities of Bangladesh – Dhaka and Chittagong, we have a total addressable market of annual $1.3 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!

Shuttle is an app based pick and drop transportation service only for women that aims to provide safe, affordable, and comfortable transportation for all women in Bangladesh.

Shuttle runs of specific routes with specific pick-up points and maintains a fixed schedule. We provide the service in air-conditioned mini vans where 10-11 women can commute together which makes the service affordable and reduces traffic jam in a densely populated city like Dhaka. To ensure utmost passenger safety, we include a trip manager in every single ride who is responsible for picking up and dropping off our customers safely and also for ensuring safety throughout the ride.

Shuttle being a pick and drop transportation service uses an app just like Uber and other ride sharing services. Our User App is complemented by an app for the trip manager. Whenever a customer books a ride through her app by selecting time, date and pick-up and drop-off points, the booking gets added to the trip manager’s app and the Trip Manager gets a notification and the necessary customer data. The Trip Manager then communicates with the customer through the app to onboard her from the selected pick-up point. Customers who do not have a smartphone, can also book rides by calling our hotline.  

Whenever our customer service team receives a complaint through the hotline or our Facebook Group, we can instantly track the vehicle and the assigned Trip Manager using customer ID in the Admin Panel and take necessary actions. Since all of our vehicles are rented, we use AI to predict demand for a particular day/month and manage the supply of the vehicles accordingly.

As shuttle deals with women passengers, one critical aspect of our service is security and surveillance. Though a basic level of security is ensured by our trip managers, constant surveillance is needed for that added sense of safety and assurance. To ensure that our vehicles are always under observation, we have developed a surveillance app solely for Shuttle which enables us to have a 360 view of every vehicle running under Shuttle. This app also helps us pin point the exact location of our vehicles which is a major benefit when dealing with complaints of late arrivals.

Shuttle is a mixture of ride-sharing services and public transportation customized for women in developing countries. In other words, using technology we are ensuring all the conveniences of ride-sharing services at the cost of public transportation with an added layer of safety measures for women.

For the price we are charging, it would be impossible to become a sustainable business if we only had customers during the peak hours (morning and evening).  By primarily targeting university-going students (who have classes at different times of the day), scheduling our trips according to their convenience, letting our users pre-book their seats through the app and managing the supply accordingly, we are ensuring that we have passengers throughout the day. Using mini-vans, we have been able to reduce price/passenger significantly!

Unlike popular ride-sharing services, we provide the service ourselves and take full responsibility of our customers’ safety.

A trained and verified trip manager (other than the driver) is assigned in every vehicle who ensures passenger safety and using technology, does the difficult job of picking up multiple customers from multiple pickup points at different times. A special surveillance app has been developed solely for Shuttle, which gives us a 360 view inside our vehicles at all times.

Women population in Bangladesh is more than 49%, but other than us no one is working specifically for this segment. By providing a customized, safe, comfortable and affordable transportation solution only for women, we are giving women in Bangladesh the freedom to commute without fear!

Shuttle being an app-based pick&drop service uses a similar technology to ride-sharing services like Uber and has an interface similar to flight-booking apps like Agoda.

We have 2 principal apps – one for the users and the other for the trip managers. Whenever a customer books a ride through her app by selecting time, date and pick-up and drop-off points, the booking gets added to the trip manager’s app and the trip manager gets a notification and the necessary customer data. The trip manager then communicates with the customer through the app to onboard her from the selected pick-up point.

Customer registration, ride booking, payment, navigation, vehicle tracking – these are the main features of our apps. To ensure smooth execution of our service and operation, we have a strong central controlling and monitoring system with a separate dashboard and panel used by the operation team.

To ensure that our vehicles are always under observation, we have developed a surveillance app solely for Shuttle which enables us to have a 360 view of every vehicle running under Shuttle. This app also helps us pin point the exact location of our vehicles which is a major benefit when dealing with complaints of late arrivals.

Using AI we plan to forecast an accurate demand for our rides at specific time of a day or month of a year. The science of AI will also help us introduce dynamic pricing, where fares will vary based on peak and off-peak hours. 

For decades, lack of safety in public transport has been a major problem for women in Bangladesh and we realized that the only way to solve is problem is coming up with a customized solution only for women.

To make our service affordable, we provide the service in mini-vans where 10-11 women can commute together. We provide a verified trip manager in every ride whose primary responsibility is to ensure passengers’ safety. To ensure further safety, we have CCTV installed in all our vehicles which is monitored by our team. Also, through the Shuttle app, our users and the operation team can continuously track the vehicles.

All our Drivers and trip managers are highly trained and go through a rigorous selection process before being hired at Shuttle. We have a 24/7 hotline number with a dedicated customer service team. Whenever a customer faces any problem, she can instantly share with us by calling our hotline so that we can take immediate action.

To sum it up, by providing a safe, affordable, and comfortable transportation, Shuttle is bringing drastic changes in the lives of women in Bangladesh. We started with just 2 vehicles and 5 customers in July 2018, but after receiving a tremendous response from the initial users, we never looked back. Right now, Shuttle has a customer base of over 15,000 and every day more than 1,200 of them uses Shuttle to commute. So far in the last 12 months we have provided more than 150,000 successful rides.  

Right now, Shuttle has a customer base of over 17,000 and every day more than 1,200 of them uses Shuttle to commute. So far in the last 12 months, we have completed more than 150,000 successful rides. 

Currently, we are only operating in 7 routes in Dhaka. Within the next 12 months, we want to cover the entire Dhaka city and also expand to Chittagong from where we have already received a huge number of signups. 12 months from now, we target to complete a total 0f 800,000 rides and take the total number of registered users to 100,000.

Even though at the moment most of our customers are university-going students and office-goers, three years down the line, we plan on coming up with an even affordable solution for the lower segment (I.e. garments workers). We also want to expand our solution to other developing countries such as Pakistan and Nigeria where women are facing similar problems. Five years down the line we want to directly impact at least 2 million women.

Shuttle is having positive impact not only by ensuring safe commute for women, but also by promoting women engagement in workforce. Shuttle being a women centric service, we try and ensure that majority of our employees (33 out of 48) are females. We believe that our intention of making Shuttle an “All Women Team” will play a role in future women empowerment drives and will encourage many more women to work and contribute to our economy.

Safety in public transport is a major issue not only in Bangladesh, but also in several other developing countries. Shuttle is a sustainable and scalable solution for all working women and female students because it provides a safe, cheap and convenient mode of transport to women.

At the moment we are only operating on 7 routes in Dhaka City. We want to cover the entire city within this year and then expand to other cities in Bangladesh next year. If we consider the female university students and corporate women within the age group of 18-35 only in two major cities of Bangladesh – Dhaka and Chittagong, we have a total addressable market of annual $1.3 billion.

After we solve the transportation problem for women in Bangladesh, we would like to expand to other developing countries such as Nigeria and Pakistan which have 95+ mln and 85+ mln women population respectively. We already did our primary research on these two countries and have also found interested partners to replicate the same solution in these countries.

Through our service we intend to pioneer a drive of women employment and women engagement in our society. We intend to establish driving school and training centers for women soon, from where the graduates will be offered jobs at Shuttle. As the demand of Shuttle rises and our expansion continues, more and more jobs will be created for women, and more and more women will be able to contribute to the economy.

• Operational: The biggest challenge of our business model is ensuring we have customers during off-peak hours. Since we are trying to provide the service at an affordable fare, we will not have a sustainable business if we only have customers during peak hours (morning and evening).
• Financial: To achieve our goal of ensuring every woman in Bangladesh has the freedom to commute wherever and whenever they want to, we need to scale up so that we can cater to more and more women. Scaling up to a certain level is also important to reach our target of achieving financial sustainability. However, to scale up, we need investments in the growth stage of our business.
• Partnerships: Solving the transportation problem for women is a massive task and the collaborations with organizations who are in the same space will be a key to becoming successful in this journey.
• Cultural: Since we plan on expanding to other developing countries such as Nigeria and Pakistan, some level of cultural understanding will be vital for expansion to these countries.   

To overcome the challenge of ensuring customers during off-peak hours, we have targeted university students who have classes throughout the day as our primary customers. We have already been able to validate that we can ensure customers during off-peak hours targeting university students in the existing routes (we are already profitable in 4 out of 7 routes). Also, for the upcoming routes that we have finalized, the number one criteria for selecting them has been to see if there are universities in the routes. 

We are very fortunate to have received seed-investment from Robi Axiata Limited’s incubation program. We are also in advanced discussion with few local and international investors for Series A investment to ensure we can continue growing. Also, to reduce the cash burn, we are increasing efficiency in the existing routes every month.

To get introduced to larger organizations, explore possible collaboration opportunities and letting people outside Bangladesh know about our work, we are applying to different international awards, accelerator programs and grant opportunities such as MIT solve.

To expand our service to other countries facing similar problems, we have already started doing our analysis and research. We have already been able to shortlist two countries – Nigeria and Pakistan and currently in talks with interested partners to replicate the same solution in these countries.

We have a team of around 49 people working at Shuttle at the moment. The breakdown is given below:

Full-time employees: 22

Part-time employees: 7

Contractual employees: 20

We are a team of three co-founders – Reyasat (CEO), Jawwad (COO) and Sufian (CTO). Jawwad and I (Reyasat) are business graduates, whereas Sufian is a CSE graduate. Before starting Shutte, I worked at Robi Axiata Limited as a Product Specialist where I was responsible for end-to-end product management. As the CEO, I look after business development, strategy and finance, manage funding, and maintain relationship with the existing and potential investors. Jawwad (COO), who previously established his own event management and marketing firm, looks after operations, marketing, branding and HR. Sufian (CTO), who previously founded an IT firm and worked as the CTO there for around 5 years, leads the technology and product departments of Shuttle.

We are best-placed to solve this problem because we have seen our female friends and relative suffer while commuting in public transport and we are determined to solve this problem. 

Over the last 12 months, we have grown from a team of 4 to a team 49 (most of whom are women). Since we have a clear goal from day one to solve the transportation problem for women in Bangladesh, we never had to put in too much effort in building a good culture within the organization. All our employees believe in the company’s goal and know that they are contributing in bringing a social change. This is why our employees are self-motivated and never afraid to go the extra mile for ensuring customer satisfaction. This, we believe, is the best thing about Team Shuttle!

Shuttle came out of Robi Axiata Limited's incubation program "r-ventures". In addition to providing mentorship, training and office-space, Robi also provided us with a seed-investment of around $200,000 and hence, they have equity stake in the business. 

• Primary Customers: female university-going students and office-goers in Dhaka. Currently, we have more than 17,000 registered customers.
• Service: App based pick and drop transportation service only for women.
• Value Proposition: Safe, affordable and comfortable transportation for women. 

Our business model is pretty simple. Just like buses, customers buy tickets to use Shuttle. Our ticket fare varies depending on the route. Currently, we generate around $1,000 revenue/day. So far in the last 12 months, we have generated around $100,000 revenue in total. So far, our customers pay us in cash after getting in the vehicle. 

We also plan on introducing new verticals listed below that will help us generate more revenue: 

 1. selling retail products (soft drinks, chips, biscuits) inside the vehicle since our customers spent around an hour on average per trip.  

2. Providing delivery service during off-peak hours

3. Letting brands run marketing campaigns targeted to women inside the vehicle (we will setup LED screens inside the vehicle for running ads)

Since we are a startup which is in the initial stage, we need investments to scale and grow our business and impact more time. After we received tremendous response from the initial users, we have received around $200,000 seed-investment from the incubation program of Robi Axiata Limited "r-ventures". Now, to finance our growth, we are mainly focusing on venture capital. We are already in advance talks with few international investors for Series A investment and have received verbal offers. For the next one year, we will need $600k investment to scale our business. And the year after that we will be needing $100,000 more. After that we will become a self-sustaining business. To reach our target of achieving financial sustainability, we need to scale to a certain level and at the same time ensure that we are increasing efficiency. According to our forecasts, we will start making profits from the beginning of 2021 and by the end of that year will have $234 mln profit in total. Hence, from that point on, we will achieve financial sustainability and be able to finance our own growth.

We are also in the lookout for grant/collaboration opportunities for our special projects such as establishing driving schools and training centers for women. 

Since Shuttle is a startup, we as a team have a lot of room for improvement for which proper mentor-ship and expert guidance is needed. I believe Solve would be the perfect platform where we can share my journey so far with industry experts and potential investors and partners, talk about our plans for the future and collaborate with appropriate partners. Since Solve gives their participants huge exposure and the opportunity to partner with global players, this would be a huge opportunity for us to explore partnership and collaboration opportunities to take our solution to the next level.

Solving the transportation problem for women is a massive task and the only way we can succeed in this journey is if we can get support from larger organizations. We being young entrepreneurs, it is very difficult for us at the moment to reach out to international experts and big organizations. This is where the experience of MIT Solve will be invaluable. Through this platform if we can let the world know about the work we have been doing and the changes that we are bringing in Dhaka, we believe, we will be able to avail many collaboration opportunities. 

The types of organization that we would like to partner with and the reasons behind the partnership is mentioned bellow:

• Vehicle manufacturing company - To bring in customized vehicles which would suite Shuttles necessities.
• Startup Accelerator – Association with Startup Accelerators would help us get constructive feedback and mentorship, which is necessary for the growth of any startup.
• Venture Capital Institutions – Investments and funding is the key for survival for any venture going through a growth phase and Shuttle is no different.
• UN/USAID – for undertaking special community projects such as building driving schools and training centers for women
• NGOs that work for women empowerment and gender equality – for undertaking special projects to drive women engagement 

Even though Shuttle is a transportation service only for women, some of our drivers and trip managers are still males. If we do manage to win the GM Prize, we will spend the money to establish projects that will help us to reach our goal of making Shuttle an “All Women Team”.

We as a nation have narrowed down the job opportunities for women and the outcome of this mentality is unemployment and a demoralized labor force. The people of our society can imagine a woman being a cook, an officer but cannot accept her as a driver or a trip manager.

Hence, we want to establish a driving school for women. In Bangladesh, driving as a profession is dominated by the male population of our country and it is high time we bring changes to it.

We also plan on establishing a dedicated training center for trip managers. Here, women will be given training on how to ensure safety and satisfaction of our customers during a ride. The graduates from the driving school and the training center will be offered employment at Shuttle as Drivers, Trip Managers and Customer Service Officers. The end goal of all these will be to form an “All Women Team” at shuttle.

If we win the innovation for women Prize, we will expand our service to a new city - Chittagong (from where we have received a huge number of signups already) so that we can ensure safe transport for more women.

Even though Shuttle is a transportation service only for women, many of our drivers and trip managers are still males. If we do manage to win this award, we will spend a part of the prize-money to establish projects that will help us to reach our goal of making Shuttle an “All Women Team”.

We as a nation have narrowed down the job opportunities for women and the outcome of this mentality is unemployment and a demoralized labor force. The people of our society can imagine a woman being a cook, an officer but cannot accept her as a driver or a trip manager.

Hence, we want to establish a driving school for women. In Bangladesh, driving as a profession is dominated by the male population of our country and it is high time we bring changes to it.

We also plan on establishing a dedicated training center for trip managers. Here, women will be given training on how to ensure safety and satisfaction of our customers during a ride. The graduates from the driving school and the training center will be offered employment at Shuttle as Drivers, Trip Managers and Customer Service Officers. The end goal of all these will be to form an “All Women Team” at shuttle.

The prize from Innospark Venture Prize will be invested to AI based system which will forecast demand of our trips and will adjust price accordingly. This AI module will help us introduce dynamic pricing based on peak and off peak hours and will also help us organize big sets of data to meaningful and usable information.

The main form of data that we collect comes in the form of user information, other sources being customer usage rate and number of rides taken per day. With improvement in our system, we will be able to organize these huge sets of data and arrange them to make sense out of it. There are a lot of information that exists beneath those data and we are willing to invest heavily in our system to extract those data. 

Shuttle has made commuting safe, comfortable, and affordable for these 17,000 women and wishes to serve thousands more in the coming days of its journey. Through our service we intend to pioneer a drive of women employment and women engagement in our society which has never been seen before.

If we win the Morgridge Family Foundation Community Driven Innovation Prize, we will expand our service to a new city - Chittagong (from where we have received a huge number of signups already) so that we can ensure safe transport for more women.12 months from now, we target to complete a total 0f 600,000 rides and take the total number of registered users to 100,000. 

A portion of the Prize will also be used to form an ecosystem of Shuttle where Shuttle will establish a training facility where women will be given driving lessons as well as training on how to become trip managers. This institute will further encourage the drive of women empowerment in our country. The graduates from that training institute will be offered jobs at Shuttle with an end goal of making Shuttle an “All Women Team”.