Dragon launches carpooling app

Cork-based Dragons’ Den star Seán O’Sullivan believes he has spotted a multimillion euro gap in the market that will benefit commuters as well as the environment.

The Avego carpooling app — which will allow people to share the cost of journeys with strangers, cutting down on costs, benefiting the environment, and reducing the amount of traffic on the roads — will be officially launched in Kinsale tomorrow night.

The app is already being used by a number of people in the town who are saving thousands of euro on petrol and car costs by finding others who are going the same direction.

The new app will allow users to find people travelling to the same destination at the same time as them in real time, as well as splitting the cost of the journey. The driver of the car gets €1 for the first mile and 20c for every mile after.

The avego app handles all of the payments and takes 15% of the cost for administration and research and development.

Mr O’Sullivan is confident that it can be turned into a viable business employing 100 people

“For it to work for us we need about 100,000 daily users. With that we could support about 100 employees in Cork and around the world,” he said.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks for carpooling is that people are unwilling to share their private cars with strangers.

Mr O’Sullivan said there will be no strangers using Avego as every person on the system will have to provide their picture, credit card details, phone number, and address to the company.

There will also be a rating system and if somebody is not comfortable with another user, they can remove them so that they will never have to share a journey again.

Although there are payments involved in the system, he said there would be no tax implications as it is not a profit-making exercise, simply a cost recovery that the parties are engaging in.

There is also no commercial implications on insurance as it is a not-for-profit making enterprise.

“In Ireland we expect to get about 100,000 people using it to save millions.

“We believe it may take a while but we believe it is unstoppable,” he said.

* If you would like to know more, and are curious to see how the Avego app works, you can join Mr O’Sullivan tomorrow night in the Kinsale suite of Actons Hotel.