Carpooling platform that provides access to sustainable transportation.
Problem
The main problem we are solving is the lack of accessible and sustainable transportation options for people living outside the metropolitan area. Almost all people in Puerto Rico depend on owning a personal vehicle to be able to travel around the island. Not only for errands or entertainment but mainly for daily commuting to work and school.
Solution
Our solution is to crowdsource accessible, sustainable, and cost effective transportation while incentivizing drivers that commute daily to offer carpooling spaces in their daily routes to other people that need or prefer not to drive to get to their destinations.
Business Model
Our business model is based on selling connection points which a person can use to request a seat on a route shared by a driver. We incentivize drivers to share their route in our platform by rewarding him/her for the amount of people they carpool.
The Platform
Our platform consists of two main applications, Ponflow Carpooling and Ponflow Awards. Ponflow Carpooling lets the user browse routes to their desired destination and request them, in advance, through purchasing connection points. On the other hand, Ponflow Awards, incentivizes drivers to share their daily route in the platform and rewards them by the amount of people they give carpool to.
Our unique selling proposition is offering affordable and sustainable transportation through crowdsourcing carpooling. Since drivers share routes with multiple people, the pricing offered can be reduced considerably compared to other competitors.
Market
Our main target customers are people that commute daily to work or school and take more than 20 minutes to get there.
We estimate that our target customer segments in Puerto Rico are 507,445 people. Considering only 2% of those users to be interested in carpooling (as a conservative number) and to divide them 75% passengers, we estimate our Serviceable Available Market in Puerto Rico would be valued at $4.4 Million as gross income opportunity.
Marketing and Sales Strategy
Our main strategies for attracting and retaining users in our platform is through creating community engagement among various mediums. Social media is the main channel to get to our audience, but we engage with customers through other channels like YouTube videos, website blogs, email marketing, push notifications and presence in communities around the island.
Milestones and Timeline
Our main milestone so far have been designing and developing our first version of our platform based on our market research. We are currently testing our application internally and our next steps are to launch our beta for external users. After that we expect to launch publicly in January 2024.
Team
Our team is composed of Ian Vélez and Lyann Meléndez, an impact driven couple with an entrepreneurial spirit. Ian is a software developer with a B.S. in Computer Science and Lyann is a marketing specialist with a BBA in Marketing and a Masters in Digital Marketing.
Contact Information
You can contact us through phone or email directly:
Ian Vélez - ian@ponflow.com - (787)-393-5588
Lyann Meléndez - lyann@ponflow.com - (787)-236-0217