Five Bengali youths generate business buzz with ‘Drivers for Me’ app

They have finally vacated their temporary office they had within their college campus and have now rented a new office at Ruby Bypass. At a time when most start-up companies are panicking and seeing red, this company has been doing brisk business. The team dreams big and aims to extend their services to all parts of the country so that people can reach their destination without any hitches. 

Who says Bengalis are not good at business? Five Bengali youths have proved the adage wrong and taken their business turnover to thousands of crores from just a few thousand. Need we any further proof to define success? 

Rajarshi Nag, Rajarshi Basu, Paramartha Saha, Ronit Roy and Prachetas Mitra have been classmates at The Institute of Engineering & Management (IEM), Salt Lake, studying computer science. Since their college days, they had contemplated business as career options and with Rs 2,500 and still in third year in college, they took the plunge to write their story. At present, the annual turnover of the business stands at a whooping Rs 2 crore 80 lakhs. What do they operate in? They launched an app, ‘Drivers for Me.’  If a client uses the app to book a driver, the driver reaches the client’s location on time.

The five friends worked really hard to collect the initial investment amount. They saved every penny they received as pocket money, skipped lunch or even give the slip to public bus conductors while travelling and save the fare for their project. At present their business is generating jobs for 850 families, which is no mean feat during the lockdown period when people are actually losing jobs and income is shrinking.  The partners are also happy with their venture. Four of the five friends left their secure jobs earlier and took the plunge to manage the business full time.  

What inspired the friends to think out of the box and launch this app for their startup venture? They unanimously zeroed in on an incident that occurred when they were still in college and were going to take their third-year examination. One of their classmates could not take the test simply because his driver did not arrive on time and he could not reach the examination hall on time. This made the boys thinking about doing something that would ensure providing reliable drivers to people who owned four wheels on time. Rajarshi Nag said, they had to keep in mind another vital aspect before starting any venture – their capital was meagre and they would not be able to invest a substantial amount in the start-up business. So, they did a lot of research and groundwork before taking the first step. They printed handbills and each of them visited houses and met drivers in parking lots in different localities, talking to both the parties at length to find out the basic gap in the demand-supply chain.  During this difficult phase, their college gave them rock-solid support. In fact, they launched their app from the college and used the college campus as their official address for the next year and a half. 

Though their families wanted them to take the time-tested safe route of a well-paying secure job but their heart was in their start-up business. All five of them went through their personal battles before they decided to stick to the diktat of their hearts and focus on the business.

Image courtesy: IEM E-Cell Facebook page