What better gift on Women’s Day than the promise of safe transport round the year? On March 8, a group of women launched a company whose first project will be providing women drivers with a bike taxi service exclusively for female passengers.
The pink bike service will be available on the Snap-E-Cabs platform, that already runs electric four-wheeler app cabs around town. “The service will go live in about a month but we wanted to do the soft launch on Women’s Day and build awareness,” said Mahendra Bindal, who runs Snap-E-Cabs.
The onus of providing lady drivers has been undertaken by W4W Empower Foundation , a non-profit organisation that will work for women’s safety, education, employment, and financial literacy. “We had started as a Facebook page during the pandemic but the time has come to move to the next level. Our first baby is the pink scooty,” said one of the directors, Palak Mehra. “Women feel uncomfortable riding behind a male driver so this service will ensure safety for lady passengers and income for lady drivers.”
The service was launched at Bengal Dhaba, between Ultadanga and Lake Town, by the co-director of the restaurant Mohini Bose. “People are always complaining about the lack of services but seldom does anyone step up and provide a solution like this. If every house has one empowered woman, society will be empowered as a whole,” said the entrepreneur who is also MLA and minister Sujit Bose’s daughter. Mohini, who loves driving cars and riding bikes, even rode the electric bike for a feel.
Female drivers wanted
First up, the company is looking to hire women riders. “We’ll hold camps and put up hoardings asking for drivers in Duttabad and other slums and spread word through our domestic helps,” said another director Sikha Rawat. “We will train them to ride too.” The drivers will get electric scooties for a nominal charge and are expected to earn between Rs 15,000 and 25,000 a month.
“The bikes are easy to ride as they don’t have gears. They will have provision for charging mobile phones, as it is very important for women to be connected at all times, as well as a safety kit with first aid items as well as pepper spray. In the next phase, we also want to start deliveries so the bikes will have space for boxes too,” added Yash Ramgarhia, who was the anchor for the event as well as the better half of a director Neha Ramgarhia. The other directors of the company are Richa Lunia and Jyoti Gupta.
Riding ahead
Bindal said that the service would be launched in zones, with the first being the Salt Lake-Lake Town area. “We shall focus on last-mile connectivity, especially around Metro stations. Timings will be from 7am to 9pm,” he said. Snap-E-Cabs’s office, by the way, is in Mani Casadona, New Town.
“In our three years of operations, we have a fleet of 1,200 electric cars and will be entering the bike segment with these pink bikes,” Bindal added. “There is a huge market of lady customers who are forced to pay more to avail four-wheelers at present as they are uncomfortable riding pillion with men. We are starting with a fleet of 100 pink bikes but the demand, we expect, is not less than 5,000.”
Women drivers of the first phase can be recruited locally, said Bindal, “but we want to empower women from the districts. PG accommodation here is expensive so from the government we seek working women’s hostels, where they can put up.”
Chief financial officer of Snap-E-Cabs, Udit Rawat, explained that the riders would have to pay them a nominal sum up front for the bikes, and an EMI-like amount for a few years, after which the bike would be theirs. “They will have to pay no fuel charges as these are electric bikes. They can charge the bikes at our 20 fast charging stations (that can each charge 100 vehicles at a time) across town or at home overnight. We are providing the entire eco-system.”
The test bikes on the day were driven by Sanchita Shaw, who has been an app cab driver before. “I never felt unsafe driving,” said the lady who is yet to decide whether or not to join the bike service.
Rawat, the CFO, added that like customer care, they have a department to look into the needs of drivers and that they’ve never had safety issues raised by lady drivers.