SafariShare · 31 December 2020 · 3 min read
One year ago this month, we launched SafariShare. Here is where we stand.
Despite a global pandemic that suspended public transport for months and dropped our volumes to near zero during lockdown, 2020 has ended with numbers worth sharing.
Over the December holiday period alone, SafariShare has facilitated travel for over 980 people — families heading home, students returning to their towns, workers making the trip they had been delaying for months.
Since launching in December 2019, the platform has:
On that last figure: sharing a ride with two other passengers reduces greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 8 kilograms per journey. At 1,200 tons avoided across a year, that is a real climate contribution from a platform that did not exist twelve months ago.
The pandemic was the hardest stress test we could have faced in our first year. It also taught us things that normal operations never would have.
We learned that demand for organised, shared travel is resilient. When restrictions eased, people came back to the platform quickly. The habits formed before lockdown resumed.
We learned, from conversations with bus operators sitting idle during the shutdown, that the transport sector has a deep digital infrastructure gap. Operators with no online presence, no digital booking records, and no way to reach their customers remotely were completely exposed. That observation is sitting with us as we think about where SafariShare goes next.
We also learned that the ATMA accelerator, which we joined in October, is giving us a much sharper framework for measuring and communicating impact. The numbers above are not estimates we are guessing at. They come from actual trip data and verified emissions calculations.
2021 begins with 7,800 users on the platform, a six-month accelerator programme underway, and a clearer sense of the problem than we had a year ago.
The challenge remains supply. Demand is consistent. We need more drivers listing more trips, more reliably, on more routes, so that a passenger searching any major corridor finds options when they look.
That is the work of 2021. We are grateful to everyone who has travelled with SafariShare this year and looking forward to what comes next.