Former UCT students' ride-sharing app aims to build a commuting culture

The City One app encourages more South Africans who use the same daily routes, to drive together.

Former University of Cape Town (UCT) students, Gugulethu Mhlanga and Simphiwe Kuse say they asked people what they want, before launching their new ride-sharing app.

The City One app encourages more South Africans who use the same daily routes to commute together.

Ray White speaks to Mhlanga to find out how the app works and whether it will really save commuters time and money.

The app is basically about trying to get people that drive alone on their way to work, to drive together and try and reduce the commuting cost and the the traffic on the road, eventually.

Gugulethu Mhlanga, Co-founder - City One

It looks for people who stay and work in the same area and tries to connect them based on their travel times.

Gugulethu Mhlanga, Co-founder - City One

We did a lot of testing, asked people what they thought. Some things we learnt along the way were instead of it being like Uber where you can't see the details - things like where they work, a profile about them, people were concerned about this one being more social. People want to know where you work, are you female, what kind of job do you do, what are your interests.

Gugulethu Mhlanga, Co-founder - City One

Explaining the security aspect of the app, Mhlanga says they have more or less the same security measures as Taxify and Uber.

For example, drivers are vetted, we also take them through a training process. On the passengers' side, we don't take any cash payments for now but we know who you are because you are using your debit or credit card.

Gugulethu Mhlanga, Co-founder - City One

If anything happens on the system or platform, we know who everyone is and we can take those details and use them to find you for any malicious activity.

Gugulethu Mhlanga, Co-founder - City One

Click on the link below to find out more about the app...

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