Stranded on a road that is off the autorickshaw grid, with no conveyance of your own and looking for a ride that is hard to come by? Just pick up your smartphone and tap on it. Within five minutes your ride will come to pick you up from your location. Welcome to the service of Jugnoo — one of the leading auto-rickshaw aggregators, focused on doubling the driver’s efficiency and earnings, and providing affordable transportation to the masses on a tap.
A boon for students, office goers in and around Chandigarh, Jugnoo has a network of over 1000 autorickshaws in the City Beautiful and it is fast expanding. Based at Chandigarh, with its technical development and product development office on Madhya Marg, Jugnoo, a brainchild of two IIT Delhi alumni, is changing the way the city is commuting.
From office goers in a rush to reach workplace on time, to students thronging to universities in and around Chandigarh, Jugnoo has become a cheap and convenient way of getting rides. Its a way that is more in tune with the 21st century we are living in – a tap on your smartphone is all it takes now to get a ride at your doorstep, thanks to the app service developed by the company.
Auto rickshaws are popular in India because they are inexpensive and easy to move through crowded streets. But have remained highly underutilized due to the inefficiencies prevalent in the conventional hailing procedure like price, route etc. Jugnoo was started with a vision to overcome these roadblocks by bringing structure into this space, aggregating auto-rickshaws via technology, thereby, making the whole process of taking a ride more transparent and convenient for both the driver and user.
Jugnoo was launched in November 2014 by Samar Singla and Chinmay Agarwal. Having started from Chandigarh, Jugnoo is currently present in 29 cities of India. Since its launch, Jugnoo has swiftly become the preferred on demand auto rickshaw app and expanded its network across 25 cities to date. With its recent deduction in fares, Jugnoo is 45 percent cheaper than its nearest competitor and has more than 8000 auto-rickshaw drivers on board. More than 2.3 million commuters have downloaded the app and avail the services offered by Jugnoo on regular basis.
Chinmay Agarwal, the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Jugnoo has a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and did a Joint Masters in Advanced Robotics on Erasmus Mundus scholarship from Ecole Centrale Nantes, France and University of Genoa, Italy. He is also the co-founder and ex-CTO at Jugnoo’s sister concern, Click Labs.
Jugnoo has a network of around 9000 auto-rickshaw drivers across India that is growing at a steady rate across the country. They also have women auto drivers in Nagpur, Ahmedabad and Noida. The on demand auto-rickshaw aggregator,has traversed over 10,000 rides a day across Delhi NCR region. After launching its services in Gurgaon, Jugnoo easily met challenges in the public transport system in Delhi NCR region followed by Delhi and Noida in September and October 2015.
The service has become a mark of how commuting is changing rapidly in the tricity – Panchkular, Mohali and Chandigarh. While less than a decade ago an autorickshaw was a rare sight in the city, it is now estimated that there are more than 50,000 auto rickshaws plying on the roads. While most of these operate on a road grid system – Jugnoo is a novel attempt to get a ride right at where you are through technology use.
Recently, Jugnoo relaunched a revamped user interface and rolled out new features to make its app more interactive and user-friendly. Users now have access to an emergency tracking option as a safety measure, improved auto location tracking feature with animated auto movement, single tap booking, and cancelling feature and in-app customer support.
The new interface is also more colorful, with creative illustrations and pop-ups, and updated notifications. Elaborating on the new interface Samar Singla Co-founder and CEO at Jugnoo said, “Innovation and transformation are imperative to progress. We have redesigned our interface and introduced new features to make the ride booking experience more engaging and enjoyable for our users. As safety of our commuters is of utmost concern to us, we are constantly evolving our platform and are adding new features for the same.”
