Carpooling.com

ECO12 Award Jury Winner Carpooling

ECO12 Award Jury Winner Carpooling Photo

ECO12 Award Facebook Winner Carpooling

Carpooling.com Logo

Twitter Pitch

Carpooling.com helps people share rides so they can travel cheap, save gas, reduce CO2 emissions and meet new friends.

Company Information

Markus Barnikel Photo

Elevator Pitch

With 1 billion cars on the planet, carpooling.com believes that everyone should have access to affordable transport. By sharing a ride, people have access to a mobility solution, which is affordable and sustainable. Pollution, traffic, parking and road maintenance are reduced: everyone benefits! Created in Germany in 2001 as a student project, the popularity of the site grew quickly and the 3 founders, Michael Reinicke, Stefan Weber and Matthias Siedler committed to it full time in 2008. In 2010, the company expanded internationally and had instant success in every country where it launched. In May 2011, the company re-branded as carpooling.com. Today, carpooling.com is the largest ride sharing network in Europe, transporting 1 million people each month in 5000 cities and 45 countries. As new technologies establish trust between strangers, ride sharing is becoming increasingly popular. It is a vibrant form of peer-to-peer transport, which is the perfect complement to regular public transports. Carpooling.com is financed by a transaction-based booking system as well as revenue sharing deals with companies such as the German Automotive Club ADAC and transport carriers such as Eurolines and Deutsche Bahn to provide users with the best travel options. Carpooling.com also sells white label solutions for companies, which allow their employees to carpool to work and therefore save money for travel expenses.

Smart Green Product

The coolest fact about carpooling is how much it saves both for travelers and the environment. It is a simple solution with enormous economical, ecological and social benefits. Since the creation of carpooling.com, 375 million liters of gas were saved and 725.000 tons of CO2 were prevented from entering the atmosphere, all with a few clicks of a mouse or smartphone! Carpooling.com offers ride sharing opportunities that are easy to access by computer, mobile phone (iPhone, Android) or social network (Facebook). Drivers can offer empty seats and passengers can book a seat online like a bus or a train ticket. People can choose who they want to ride with, how much space and comfort they need, where they want to meet and what they are willing to pay. With mobile apps and location-based technology, carpooling can be spontaneously organized on the go and users can access their online ticket at anytime with all information. A network oriented around shared resources can only scale if it is grounded by a system of trust and transparency. Carpooling.com includes many features that ensure a safe and reliable ride, such as a user rating system, user authentication through picture-ID and women-only rides.

Milestones

  • Funding: confidential
  • Investors: Earlybird Venture Capital
  • Employees: 2010: 15, 2011: 34
  • Revenues: confidential
  • Corporate customers: ADAC and E.ON
  • Milestones: 3.5 million registered users (registration is optional), daily access to over 600.000 rides, partnerships with: ADAC, Deutsche Bahn and Eurolines.