In Pakistan, a winding road for the entrepreneurs building a carpooling app

The story of Savaree, a carpooling app in Pakistan, is not a typical one. Co-founder Madeeha Hasan was a graphic designer at a software house. She loved her job and also the money that came along with it. At a conference for entrepreneurs held in her city, she heard stories of entrepreneurs, how they have struggled to get their startups off the ground. She immediately thought that’s very unlike my situation. She felt relief in the fact that she doesn’t want and have to go through all that.

Yet every day she faced the problem of commuting to work. Public transport is no fun and the daily cab was pretty expensive. She came up with this idea of a ride-sharing app. Somebody who has a car can pick up passengers going the same way who can contribute to the fuel expenses. That’s exactly what Savaree does. Hasan pitched this idea at a Code for Pakistan hackathon at the start of the year. There she met with Qasim Zafar who joined her as a partner. In the next two days they developed the prototype and won the prize as the audience favourite at the hackathon.

But that was it for Hasan (pictured below) as far as Savaree was concerned. Next day she was back at the office when her boss nudged her and said, Why are you still here? After some pushing from her boss and friends, she reluctantly decided to take this idea further. Zafar joined in as CEO and with a couple of developers they decided to make this carpooling service a reality. They got incubated as part of the first batch of Lums Center of Entrepreneurship (LCE) in Lahore. They launched the Android app in April.