The day mass transit startup Swvl announced its decision to downsize operations in Pakistan in June 2022, its country general manager Maha Shahzad fully grasped the dire circumstances that female commuters faced. Shahzad’s LinkedIn inbox flooded with messages from women asking how they would get to work the next day. Parents were worried about their daughters. “I had messages from fathers asking me point-blank, ‘How do I get my girls to school tomorrow?’” Shahzad told Rest of World.
At the time, she didn’t know what to tell them. However, the experience gave her the idea to start a new transit company: A few months later, Shahzad launched BusCaro, a platform that connects users to buses, minivans, and cars driving on fixed routes. “You have to make it in life to afford ride-hailing [cabs] and unfortunately you need to commute the most before you’ve made it,” Shahzad said. “That’s why bus hailing becomes so important.”
Women in Pakistan are highly dependent on public transport because they are far less likely to own and drive cars or bikes than men, according to a policy brief by International Growth Centre, an economic research organization in London. At the same time, women overwhelmingly find the country’s mass transit system unsafe. Overcrowding, harassment, and long wait times are common concerns, along with fear of navigating the streets alone. An audit conducted by UN Women in 2018 found that 90% of the 903 women commuters surveyed in Lahore reported experiencing sexual harassment on public buses.
Two companies in Pakistan, Swvl and Airlift, previously attempted a low-cost bus-sharing model for mass transit — but neither survived. Swvl shut all operations in Pakistan in November 2022, and is now on the verge of bankruptcy. Airlift pivoted to grocery delivery in early 2020 before shutting shop in July 2022. Both companies cited similar reasons for closure: a lack of profits and not enough users.
Where these companies failed, Shahzad saw an opportunity to succeed — with important changes to the business model. She runs BusCaro on an “asset light” model, meaning the company does not own its vehicles. Instead, it obtains vans, buses, and cars through partnerships with local transport providers. BusCaro also targets groups of people who share a commute, by catering to factories, call centers, schools, universities, and even gated housing communities.
BusCaro currently has 75 clients, including companies with a large workforce, such as PepsiCo, Ibex, and Indus Hospital. It manages up to 600 vehicles and 30,000 bookings daily. The startup has an annualized revenue of $4.5 million, Shahzad said.
Ayesha Mumtaz, a 19-year-old computer science student at Islamabad’s Capital University of Science & Technology, takes a BusCaro shuttle for her 9-kilometer (1 mile = 1.6 kilometers) commute to and from campus. She pays about 12,000 Pakistani rupees ($43) per month — a fraction of the cost of a motorcycle rickshaw or a ride-hailing service. BusCaro is more reliable, Mumtaz said, and she also feels safe.
Part of the reason why Mumtaz prefers BusCaro is because the passengers are primarily other students and faculty from her university. “It’s like a private van service, with additional safety features,” she told Rest of World. “Their vans are clean, on time, drop me off on campus right before my first class, and I’m back home on time in the evening.” Her parents track the 12-seater van’s live location on a WhatsApp group that BusCaro manages.
“You have to make it in life to afford ride-hailing [cabs] and unfortunately you need to commute the most before you’ve made it.”
Experts say that BusCaro’s predecessors, Swvl and Airlift, had flaws in their business model. “Airlift and Swvl were focusing on customers directly, rather than onboarding businesses,” Mohammad Awais Chaudhry, a founding member of B2B e-commerce marketplace Dastgyr, who worked at Airlift as supply strategy lead, told Rest of World over email.
Food delivery company Foodpanda is one of BusCaro’s corporate clients in Karachi. The company’s office is in the city center, where there is heavy traffic and few parking spaces. “When the fuel prices went up, it started becoming unaffordable to come to work,” Mir Usman Kaiser, people and rewards manager at Foodpanda, told Rest of World. Initially, 20 people signed up for BusCaro; the number rose to 100 within five months.
Foodpanda had previously considered partnerships with Airlift and Careem, a ridehailing company, but the former didn’t offer doorstep pick-up and the latter’s payment system was too complicated, Kaiser said. Now, BusCaro has 32 vehicles ferrying 28% of Foodpanda’s workforce across Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad, he said.
“BusCaro will have an edge over motorized rickshaws and ride-hailing services as it is likely to be cheaper. They have an edge over public buses given the on-demand, higher quality, and assured nature of service,” Ravi Gadepalli, a public transport policy expert, told Rest of World. “Whether they attract adequate ridership that is willing to pay more than buses but willing to take a circuitous bus slower than ride-hailing services is the key question.”
Public bus tickets cost between 20 and 50 rupees (7–18 cents), which is still the cheapest option. But the routes lack the flexibility of a tailored pick-up and drop-off. While BusCaro’s prices vary across partnerships, ride-hailing cabs can charge up to five times as much as BusCaro, and rickshaws up to four times more, Shahzad said.
While Pakistan’s economy is stabilizing, raising money is no easy feat. Startups in the country raised just $3 million in the first half of 2024. It’s all the more difficult for a woman founder. Shahzad spoke to more than a thousand investors; she eventually secured funds from a dozen. “When you go to a client or you go somewhere for a partnership, they have trouble taking women seriously,” Shahzad said. “I assume an absurdly low conversion rate and just shamelessly keep going after investors.”
“When you go to a client or you go somewhere for a partnership, they have trouble taking women seriously.”
“Swvl was on the verge of being profitable in Pakistan while Maha Shahzad was at the helm, and so it’s actually a reflection on the company’s ability to be unit economic positive rather than the business model itself,” Kalsoom Lakhani, co-founder of the women-led VC fund i2i Ventures, told Rest of World.
Shahzad isn’t the only one coming to BusCaro with lessons from the past. Among the company’s core team members, four previously worked at Swvl, two at Careem, and one worked at Careem and Foodpanda. About 45 people in the 60-person team are former Careem employees, Shahzad said. “These are people who have been obsessing with these problems, have an understanding of it.” She added that BusCaro is on track to be profitable in the next few months.
Mobility experts say there will be difficulties ahead for BusCaro. Mass transit projects are usually heavily subsidized by governments; private mobility companies will always have economic challenges.
“For each employee, traveling with BusCaro is cheaper than coming to work on a bike,” Kaiser, from Foodpanda, told Rest of World. He said that while bike commutes cost around 11 rupees (4 cents) per kilometer and BusCaro charges 8 rupees, the latter is able to offer lower prices because Foodpanda subsidizes nearly four-fifths of the amount per passenger.
“Private organizations can certainly step in and provide solutions, particularly when the state has withdrawn from public transport provision. But it will be challenging because of the high costs involved,” Fizzah Sajjad, a mobility researcher and urban planner, told Rest of World. “I don’t believe that private companies can replace the state.”
