When Maha Shazad was 19, she was forced to drop out of university in Pakistan because she could not find safe and reliable transport. Shazhad explained to TechCrunch that 85% of working women in the country have faced sexual harassment at least once on public transport. Then, when she started working, she spends more than half her salary finding safer options for her daily commute, a problem she says many Pakistanis face.
“The plight of commuting is a very real problem facing Pakistanis across the country, especially women,” she said. He founded Shazad BusCaro to give commuters a safe and reliable alternative for their daily commute.
The startup announced today that it has raised $1.5 million in pre-seed funding led by Orbit Startups, SOSV’s program for emerging market startups. The round also included participation from Wahed Ventures and angel investors from the mobility sectors.
BusCaro allows passengers to book rides through an app, but unlike other ride-sharing apps, it uses a B2B2C model. For example, universities work with BusCaro to offer students reliable routes, while factories use it to transport workers. This also allows BusCaro to match demand with supply and increase operators’ incomes while keeping costs low for commuters.
It ensures rider safety with features such as driver background checks, vehicle inspections and tracking. BusCaro also has an emergency response team and a 24/7 customer support team, as well as a live tracking feature that allows riders to share their locations with friends and family. Another feature, created specifically for women, allows them to use a masked name instead of their real name to show their drivers. The startup is currently working on creating a panic/SOS button on the app that will connect passengers directly to BusCaro and its security partner, Mohafiz Security Agency.
Since its inception in 2022, BusCaro has expanded its operations to Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad and now has over 300 vehicles, owned by private operators, and makes over 20,000 bookings per day. The startup says it’s on track to become profitable by early 2024 and recently hit $2.5 million in revenue.
Before founding BusCaro, Shazhad worked on the Careem app, which was acquired by Uber in 2020. Despite Careem’s success, Shazhad realized that only 2% to 3% of passengers could afford it. He then joined Swvl, another mobility startup, which offered many transportation options other than cars. But as macroeconomic conditions worsened last year, Swvl decided to exit Pakistan. As managing director of Swvl Pakistan, Shazhad says she was at a crossroads.
BusCaro’s passenger app
“I knew that despite the extreme economics of the model, Swvl was solving a huge problem and we had to keep solving that problem,” he says. “That’s when we put our first BusCaro bus on the road and started this journey.”
He adds that BusCaro’s model is different from the high-cost, high-investment model used by other ride-sharing apps. By partnering with corporate and academic organizations, BusCaro is able to access a user base of employees and students in a seat-based B2B or B2B2C model. Shazhad says her business model has reduced BusCaro’s customer acquisition costs to almost zero.
BusCaro’s goal is to provide safe and affordable daily transportation options for everyone. Shazhad says there isn’t enough public transport to meet demand and it’s often unsafe, especially for women. Private mass transport players that can leverage technology to scale effectively are currently non-existent in the country and transport options are not affordable for many people.
He adds that BusCaro’s advantages include aggregating demand while stabilizing and optimizing supply payment, which helps carriers’ cash flow. It is also able to offer competitive prices to customers because it uses buses and minivans, resulting in lower costs per fixed seat and fuel savings.
Many commuters in Pakistan spend around 20% to 50% of their income on travel and transport, with women spending more as they look for safer options. BusCaro’s target customers are people who earn less or who cannot afford to spend so much of their monthly income on transport.
Another audience for BusCaro is office workers who are tired of driving their own vehicles to work due to rising fuel prices and lack of parking spaces. Other users include students, especially girls, whose parents want to use a safe transportation option.
“With BusCaro, they feel safe because of the measures we have put in place, including the re-checking of our drivers, vehicle inspections and route operation monitoring in our app, which allows both the user and anyone who wants to share to track the route,” says Shazhad.
BusCaro founder Maha Shahzad
BusCaro competes in several categories of ride-hailing and public transport platforms. Shazhad says Careem is expensive even for its existing user base, but BusCaro is a third of the cost. There are other transport companies in Pakistan like In-Driver which are slightly cheaper and reliable but lack the security measures that BusCaro has.
BusCaro also tackles public transport, but Shazad describes it as “inadequate” and “extremely unsafe”. He adds that most riders use it due to affordability constraints and would be willing to find other alternatives if they were available to them. Other public transport options include government-sponsored buses in Karachi, but Shazad says there are not enough vehicles to meet demand and most cover limited routes.
Finally, BusCaro deals with private players, but they do not have the same tools as BusCaro to aggregate demand and optimize offer playouts.
Shazhad said BusCaro is currently “laser focused on growing our current business by adding more accounts to our portfolio now”. It plans to expand its B2B2C partnerships and add more B2C partnerships. BusCaro also plans to work with the public sector on issues such as transport subsidies, carbon reduction, SaaS and government transport contracts. BusCaro is currently looking at adding electric vehicles next year to reduce its costs as fuel prices rise.
In a statement about the investment, Orbit Startups general partner William Bao Bean said: “Diversity and inclusion are hard to achieve when women have to spend 30% of their salary to get to work in a safe and predictable way. We supported BusCaro because they enable women and men to book safe, cheap and efficient shared transport to and from work, driving opportunities and opening up the overall economy.”
