Drife : Decentralized Ride Hailing App on Blockchain
Zero Commissions & No Surge Pricing
Ride hailing market in India today, is a duopoly. The two major players are Uber & Ola. While these service platforms have eliminated the need of haggling with unruly drivers & rides arrive at the doorstep, Customers routinely face the challenge of surge pricing especially during peak hours or even during slight drizzle or rains. Surge pricing charges are raised as high as 3X.
At the other end, Drivers do not know the direction they are heading to & end up leaving customers disgruntled when they cancel the ride.
On one end customers have to cough up extra money when in need, on the other driver partners on these platforms often claim they get raw end of the deal. Pricing models are beyond the control of users & the revenue sharing model with drivers at best is opaque.
Drife is attempting to solve these problems by building a solution that’s transparent.
Drivers pay a monthly subscription fee of INR. 2500/- & there are no additional deductions. Once a customer selects a destination , Drife calculates the trip amount & allows the drivers within a 3 km radius to bid for the trip. Drivers can quote higher or lower as well compared to the suggested trip cost. Customers get to look at all the bids & select an offer - removing the ambiguity of price, destination & commission.
Drife is built on Polygon Network, a Ethereum based Blockchain platform & issues DRF tokens that are traded on crypto marketplaces. According to the whitepaper published by Drife, application use Google Maps APIs in addition to other open source database technologies, such as PostgreSQL & Mongo DB .
It’s Currently operational in Bangalore with 1000 weekly trips & aims to operate via a decentralized franchise model in other cities.
Company is backed by many venture capitals & had raised USD 2.7Million in the year 2021. Firdosh Sheikh is the CEO & Co-Founder along with Surya Ranjit and Mudit Madra .
( Inputs & references : Rishabh Mansur’s YourStory )