Rebuilt around the three things every existing app gets wrong. A self-directed case study — research, prioritization, a design system, and a prototype you can play with.
Different journey, different price sensitivity, different trust problem.
BlaBlaCar exited India in 2017, and nobody properly filled the intercity carpool gap since. The apps that exist today — Quick Ride, sRide, Togopool — are built for intracity daily office commutes, not for the 40–400 km intercity trip. They're served by products designed for none of it.
The people stuck in the middle: young professionals, 22–32, mixed gender — choosing between buses and trains (cheap, uncomfortable, rigid) and outstation cabs (comfortable, expensive), with nothing fairly priced in between.
Being fair to the incumbents is what makes the rest credible.
These are solved, expected, and not where a new product competes:
Table stakes. So I built past this line, not on it — which brings us to the three gaps that actually matter.
Three problems nobody's closing. Each one, with my proposed fix beside it.
Every competitor's "safety feature" is a same-gender filter and a panic button. Nothing protects the rider during the trip — no live trip-sharing, no check-ins, no verified profile depth beyond a badge.
Hurts most: a woman traveling 150 km with a stranger. A toggle isn't reassurance.Reviews name last-minute cancellations as the #1 complaint. Quick Ride advertises a no-cancellation policy but doesn't enforce it. Drivers now demand 50% upfront informally — the market already voted the system doesn't work.
Hurts most: both sides — riders left stranded, drivers eating empty seats.Every Indian carpool app treats a car as an undifferentiated blob of "seats available: 2." None let a rider see or choose which seat — window vs. middle, a motion-sickness-friendly spot, a premium seat.
Hurts most: anyone who's been carsick in a middle seat for 3 hours.The call — judgment, not just taste.
Ranked by (1) how broken it is today, (2) how directly it drives trust — the real currency of a stranger-in-a-car product — and (3) defensibility.
| Problem | Solved by competitors? | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| Same-gender filter | Yes (Quick Ride) | TABLE STAKES |
| Layered in-trip safety | No | P0 |
| Cancellation fairness | Broken everywhere | P0 |
| Visual seat selection | No one has it | P0 |
| Intercity-first positioning | Orphaned segment | FOUNDATION |
| Multi-dimensional ratings | Weak everywhere | P1 |
| Pickup-point precision | Broken everywhere | P1 |
| Driver-side product depth | Neglected | P2 |
Subscription pricing, an in-app cash fallback, and direct 112 (emergency) integration were left out on purpose — each adds surface area without moving the three things that build first-trip trust. Naming what you didn't build is a stronger signal than a feature-complete fantasy.
Not a mockup — a working, fully clickable booking flow.
Opens in a new tab. Watch for the visual seat picker, the floating nav, and the one-yellow-CTA discipline.
Targets tied to the three problems — not results.
This is a case study, not a live product, so I won't fabricate outcome data. These are the targets I'd hold the launch to:
There's no clean finish line — and pretending otherwise is a red flag.
Open questions still on the wall:
The one real primary-research signal is driver-ghosting — drivers demanding partial upfront payment because cancellations burned them. Everything else in the safety copy is a hypothesis until interviews confirm it.
Want to go deeper, or talk through the calls?