The collaborative consumption of services plays an integral role in lowering costs and environmental impacts and forms the basic framework for the sharing economy. A series of factors contribute to the movement towards this model, including ecological awareness about emissions and carbon footprints, the growth of cloud-based navigation services, telecommuting, traffic congestion, changing attitudes about driving due to a lack of road safety, and large-scale suburban development outside of cities.
Careem broke the ground in the previously untapped vein in Pakistan in 2016 and created an environment of trust in online transit services. It paved the way for many new products. In Pakistan, two names come to mind when discussing demand-responsive carpooling: Airlift and SWVL. They did what policymakers and environmentalists have been trying to do for a decade; to convince people to carpool. In Q3 of 2021, SWVL earned $16.0 million of gross revenue,1,355% over the past three years, and increased bookings by approximately 230% year-over-year to 9.0 million.
SWVL is an app-based demand-responsive transit service that is very similar to hailing a cab online with the distinction that instead of picking up and dropping off on a route the customer chooses, the app determines the stops. It owes its emergence to the underdeveloped structure of public transport which is not sufficient enough to meet the growing needs of the public, and private rides are just not very economical. With the increase in petrol prices that country is in shambles and not even able to sustain its own energy needs let alone if each individual starts using his own vehicle for transportation.
Since Careem’s acquisition by Uber, the competition has deteriorated which allows the company to have a market share of sole ownership. This lack of competition has increased the prices and also lowered the quality of the general experience, which has led people to a shift towards more affordable services as the one SWVL and Airlift provide.
Although Careem has a more diverse and large portfolio with over 10 Million + downloads on Google Playstore SWVL is slowly catching up with almost half the number of app downloads than Careem. Although the number of app downloads is not necessarily a measure of good service, it still gives us a good insight into public demand. With Careem fares reaching the sky people are opting for an affordable transit service that SWVL or Airlift provides.
A regular user of SWVL, a student who commutes 30 km daily to and from university, said, “I had to travel alone at uncanny hours and almost half of my pocket money was going towards travel fare,” she said almost exasperated. “And I always have to call back home to ask for more money, which was embarrassing for me to do as my parents have always said that I’m not good with managing my expenses, but now it has become very reasonable for me,” she added.
Especially, It means she doesn’t have to send her location to friends as soon as she boards, she said. This has also reduced the market saturation for Careem and Uber drivers by creating new job opportunities.
Around 14.327 Billion/Rs. have been made exclusive for various ongoing and new projects of the climate change division to control Pakistan’s environmental degradation. Rather than disaster management, we should look at preventive measures. A deteriorating environment hinders the economic development of a country. Smog production affects labor health and productivity, tourism, future investments as well as consumer confidence index. The AQI of Lahore reached as high as 400 this year while a below 100 AQI is considered satisfactory. Planting trees is just not enough to counter the destruction of the environment done by us with creative measures like carpooling, avoiding using gas-powered appliances, workshops to educate farmers of the negative impact of burning crops are all the needs of the time.
