App made in Kitchener looks to make carpooling easier across Canada

Supporting the “Made in Canada” trend, a new app has emerged out of Kitchener, trying to shake up the carpool lane.

It’s promoted as being cheaper and more environmentally friendly, taking more cars off the roads — it’s called Carpooll. It has over 10,000 registered users so far. The company started piloting the app in January in the Tri-Cities and the GTA.

Drivers and passengers can pair with someone nearby going the same way, but both have to be verified on the app first.

The app was the brainchild of Rutvik Babaria, while he was studying in Saskatchewan. He moved to Kitchener in 2023, which is when he met his co-founder Mitul Patel, who experienced similar issues trying to travel between cities.

Canada is the second largest country, which is why Babaria thinks more travelling options are needed.

“It’s less cars on the road and that results in less traffic,” said Babaria. “We are available all over Canada. We are seeing users download our app from Vancouver, Regina, Alberta, Winnipeg, all over.”

The app boosts travel costs between two cities as little as $20-30 plus the 20 per cent fee taken from passengers that goes back into the company.

It also includes a safer commute option for women, which make up about 40 per cent of their current users. The app has an option for women called Pinkpool, that not only turns the app pink but only pairs them with other females. All in an effort to increase safety for women.

“According to our research, we found out that more females are using carpooling than males, 51 per cent of females prefer carpooling and 49 per cent of males prefer carpooling.”

Carpooll hopes to expand to include corporate carpools, Babaria said they hope to have the fully available by the end of this spring.