Ride-Sharing: Nonprofit RideAustin Service Promises To Change Market Dominated By Uber [VIDEO]
After Uber and Lyft left Austin, Texas due to a ruling that ultimately required drivers of the two popular ride-sharing services to be fingerprinted, a home-grown startup has decided to take the mantle and fill the void created by the absence of Uber and Lyft. Launched on Tuesday, RideAustin, a ride-sharing service with a twist, promises to give both drivers and riders a far better service than the two ride-share giants which left the city.
RideAustin is the brainchild of tech entrepreneur Joe Liemandt, the CEO of Trilogy, an automotive and consumer electronics software company. What is particularly interesting is the fact that RideAustin is quite altruistic in nature.
According to the service's business model, the fare of its passengers could be rounded up to the nearest dollar by the customers, with the remainder from the actual fare going to the user's charity of choice. With this, each user would not only enjoy the comforts of ride-sharing services. They would also be able to help others in need as well.
Joe Deshotel, director of communications for RideAustin, further stated that users could opt to direct their donations to communities in need.
"RideAustin will also allow riders to earmark donations for underserved communities, meaning that if you want to donate 50 rides for an underserved community, like the disabled, you'll be able to do that," he said.
Apart from the charity aspect of RideAustin, the service also plans to pay its drivers better. This is because the service is, at its core, a nonprofit organization. Thus, the firm does not need to take a percentage off from the earnings of its drivers to give investors.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the service, however, is its promise of transparency. Recently, ride-sharing giants Uber and Lyft have courted controversy by hoarding consumer data and keeping the information to themselves. Again, the nonprofit aspect of RideAustin becomes key.
"Uber and Lyft notoriously horde data and don't share that with municipalities. We will have the opposite approach and we will make our data public to everyone; we will make our data public to the city so they can improve transit planning; we'll make our data public to riders so they can choose the best times to ride; we'll make it public to drivers so they can choose the best time to drive," Deshotel said.
RideAustin has only been in development for a few weeks, with a Kickstarter campaign set to be launched soon to gauge consumer interest in the service. Despite this, however, many are already welcoming the business' unique take in an otherwise very competitive market.
