Does it make sense to eat one pizza but pay for two?

I don’t know if you guys can imagine an era where Ola and Uber did not exist and only budget options for travel, were the state run buses, if you wanted to figure your way in a new city! So if you cant relate still, let me try describing it.

So, it was 2009 and I had not received my GUJCET admit card and the exam was just1 day away.(GUJCET is Gujarat Common Entrance Test which needs to be cleared to get admission in engineering stream in any college in Gujarat) I lived in Bharuch, (small town near, where the Statue of unity is now!) and had called the officials several times and they responded that the admit card was dispatched and I will receive it soon. Now it was too late to wait and you don’t get to sit in exam without the admit card. I call the main admissions committee office in Gandhinagar, they said I should not have waited and should have collected the duplicate admit card from Gandhinagar office immediately! Wow common sense, right I did not think of that.. So I thanked them and went ahead to figure out my travel ahead!

I packed the documents and left. Now here is the issue, I never travelled alone before between cities prior to this and my Gujarati was pretty broken to make sense of the bus numbers or deal with our helpful conductors on state buses! So I tried the train first..I went to the counter and asked for the ticket to Gandhinagar, to which direct trains did not go, so much for research!! So took a ticket to Ahmedabad and boarded the Shatabdi, which apparently does not have a General compartment and (I did not know that you can pay a penalty and ride without a seat.) So the TT asked me to get down at the next station that was Baroda. Here, I decided to take the State run bus. 'Exam' next day, was now least of my concern and figuring a way to Gandhinagar and back home with the limited money seemed more of a problem.

I asked bystanders, conductors, and anyone I could find. I noticed that when fear strikes you, your hesitation of asking questions or being judged as stupid goes away and you are ready to take on anything. Finally after being cursed in an incomprehensible language(Gujarati) I made my way into a bus which was going towards Gandhinagar. You can only imagine how I made my way back home…

The point is now if I want to do the same today, I would search a slot on ‘Bla Bla’ or any ride sharing app. And make my roundtrip, easy and economic. But that was before the Pandemic! Since we already are aware of the 'sharing ecosystem' like Ola, UBER, etc and its benefits, can you guess how does it manage to keep the costs low? I guess you figured that out already and probably might be calling me a dummy for explaining it again..

They do it by solving, the below issues through technology

If I need to go from A to B, in a car I spend the fuel and toll charges (if any) on the way, alone, unless I have 3 other people who are willing to share the cost, so my share of the cost becomes now one fourth of what I would have paid if I travelled alone.

Wait there’s more, now imagine I drive a taxi and I take passengers with me to a destination for a drop, I use my 3 seat capacity to earn for one way of the journey, and come back empty on my way back. So naturally I pass the charges of the return trip to them as well; in short they travel from A to B but end up paying for a roundtrip of A to A.

So where does this apply?

• Given the examples it does apply in ride hailing services, you no more have to deal with auto and taxi who say “sir apne ko return khali ana padega na, isliye apko itna bol rahe hai!”
• It applies to optimizing logistics in trucking where the loads are either pooled together and you book a part load instead of booking the entire truck when you have less things to transport.
• Optimizing the back haul where when the truck/shipment containers returns to the origin, instead of coming empty, they are booked with cargo and earn for the same.

In case you found the article interesting, let me know in comments..

Finally, my apologies for not being able to post in last 2 weeks.