Tripda– Rocket Internet’s Carpool Startup– Heads To Asia

Rocket Internet is one of the world’s largest e-commerce focused venture capital firms and startup incubators founded in 2007 by the Samwer brothers whose successful investments in Groupon, eBay, Facebook, LinkedIn, Zynga, etc. has launched a carpooling service known as Tripda in Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

Started in Brazil, the service has now become very popular in Colombia, Chile, Argentina, and Mexico. Tripda is a fun, economical, social and super convenient way for people planning long trips, which is also different from Uber and Lyft. According to their website, “Tripda is a marketplace that connects people who need a ride to drivers who have empty seats, so that they can meet new people and save money by sharing their travel costs. Travel more and spend less!”

Traveling just got easier with Tripda! Who doesn’t like to travel, meet new people, and visit all cool places while spending less? Tripda’s ridesharing platform lets you do all that and even more!

 Here’s how Tripda works: register an account to Tripda by using your Facebook account; and if you want to offer a ride, then you must register your vehicle by providing the brand, model, color, number of seats available as well as level of comfort.

 To become a passenger: you just need to go to Tripda Homepage, provide the departure place, your destination and the day you intend to travel. The site will then match the available options for your route. You can then choose your favorite, according to the price, the driver’s preference in terms of luggage, Vehicle Comfort and so on; then you just have to show up at the right time and departure place for your trip.

After your trip, you can rate the people who went with you, assigning a mark from 1 to 5 stars to the passenger or driver as well as commenting about the trip and the people you’ve been with.

 To share a ride: you need to register your route by listing your departure and arrival points, you will also need to include the day you’re going and the estimated time of departure. The site will then give you an estimate of the cost of the trip based on the covered distance, gas consumption and tollbooths that you need to go through. You can also manually set on how much each passenger will pay, within a certain margin to prevent the driver from profiting from the trip.

When a passenger chooses to ride with you, you’ll receive an e-mail and an SMS for contacting them to define the final details, then just show up to your departure point to pickup your passenger.

After experiencing Tripda for the first time, many travellers excitedly commented: “Tripda is a new way of getting rides in a quick, easy and convenient way. The startup offers an awesome option for those who want to travel together and split costs.” Or “Great trip, great conversation, great music and clear blue sky on the road to Paraty for FLIP 2014. Everything was perfect, from one ride to the next!”

Tripda also has its Android App on Google Play.

Will you hit Tripda for your next trip? Share your comments with us.