GoTogether - India’s first intercity ride-sharing solution online

GoTogether is India's first intercity ride-sharing solution for people traveling to other cities. This idea came to Shirish Gone (the founder) when he travelled to his hometown Warangal every alternate week from his workplace in Hyderabad. "It was a regular problem for me to get a comfortable travel, as there are very less number of Volvo buses available," he says. "I tried to understand why this problem exists. I found out that there are not enough buses from any Tier-1 city to Tier-2/Tier-3 towns across India, as the buses won't get enough passengers in return," adds Shirish.

[caption id="attachment_94649" align="alignleft" width="255"] Shirish Gone, Founder of GoTogether[/caption] GoTogether helps Car-owners save fuel costs and passengers get a comfortable travel. The cool factor of this solution is, you can choose whom you want to travel with, unlike in buses or trains you don't know who is going to sit beside you. "People with cars can give rides to passengers, which became a win-win solution for both," says Akhil, an app user. Shirish with a group of 3 passionate engineers, product managers, designers with entrepreneurial attitude bootstrapped to build a mobile solutions for ride-sharing in the country. They have recently launched their android app after the success of their iOS app.

There are many startups and apps in daily commute carpooling but intercity ride is a new concept altogether. They are in talks with a few taxi services to bring more access to their users. They launched their alpha version 4 months ago and got around 300 users with zero marketing. The team is now fine tuning the solution by observing user behavior.

"This is a chicken-egg problem, where we need to balance both sides of the users to leverage value for each. So our plan is carefully go route by route basis, choosing appropriate routes where our solution has maximum utilization," says the founder.

They are currently based out of Hyderabad. They have started testing the this strategy with a pilot for 6 weeks between Hyderabad to Warangal starting on 15th August, and carefully choosing next appropriate routes.

As a message for future entrepreneurs, Shirish says "Give your 100% and you are smart enough to figure out ways to do it. In the end, it's a Do or Die commitment." They are currently bootstrapped but in talks with VC's about funding. Keep watching this space for more.