R/GA Innovation Exchange Spotlight: Meet Hira Batool Rizvi of SheKab
As part of our Inclusive Innovation series, we interviewed the female founders participating in our 2019 R/GA Innovation Academy with Kinship at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. Starting with Hira Batool Rizvi of SheKab, a subscription-based carpooling service for women & girls that aims to empower women by providing them with safe, affordable, and reliable transportation solutions. We spoke with the Co-Founder about the carpool culture in Pakistan, her motivation to support Pakistani women and her long term vision for SheKab.
Islamabad, the capital city of Pakistan, home to just over a million people and is located in the northeastern part of the country, is also the home to Hira Batool Rizvi, the Founder, and CEO of SheKab, a subscription-based monthly carpooling service for women & girls aiming to empower women by providing them with safe, affordable and reliable transportation solutions.
“I was born and bred in Islamabad, Pakistan. I did my schooling here, got my undergraduate degree in electrical engineering here and I was the kind of kid who would do so much more than the rest,” said Hira.
Much more than the rest is an understatement. Hira has an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering, a Masters in Public Policy-Science and Technology Policy from Georgia Tech, spent time as one of the few female Project Managers for Microsoft in South Asia and was also one of the very few women to work at an in-house software firm in Islamabad.
Her pedigree is coupled with her selfless intent to strengthen a workforce of women in her country. Her goal is to eliminate the threats Pakistani women face in their education and careers due to the lack of safe and affordable transport services. This is the problem SheKab solves for.
“Having conversations with women made me realize that besides the stigmas and the cultural and religious mindsets that exist, there are some real issues that needed fixing. The one that stood out to me was transportation. Public transportation was hardly available in the city because it’s made for a different, higher class. It’s designed in such a way that the lower levels of the economy are left behind, and that’s a problem. Their inability to get out of their houses and participate in the workforce disables them to participate in society.”
In response to why the focus on women opposed to servicing the broader Pakistani population, Hira said, “to be honest because no one was doing anything for us.”
Every day, 17 million women in Pakistan struggle due to the lack of safe and reliable transportation solutions, with only 28% of Pakistani women presently in the workforce. Cultural barriers, in combination with inadequate transportation services, ensure that many educated women are kept out of the workforce. Even if safe services are available, they are often inconvenient and expensive. Women are spending 40% of their monthly income on transportation alone.
“If you are a man, you can walk; if you are a woman, you end up paying four times more than men to travel to work. Or you need a male companion just to take you places. I wanted to brand SheKab as a carpool service because women in Pakistan, even if they can afford to pay, they are still reluctant to travel alone. So I thought if we could put two to three women in a car that would mean not only reduced cost but also increased safety, positive environmental impacts, and even encouraging female friendships.”
Back in 2016, SheKab initially operated as a web-based platform before turning into an app. Their product was a common registration form where people would plug in their pick up and drop off locations and then be able to calculate the rate of their ride. Hira and her team would then manually cluster connect the riders pick up points and use Google maps to map their pick and drop off locations. They would then match the rider to partner drivers, which currently is made up of 20% women drivers and 80% male taxi drivers.
SheKab currently operates in 4 cities, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Wah Cantt, and Taxila with a fleet of over 500 cars serving over 100 professional women on a monthly basis. SheKab has thousands of women as registered users and even has a waitlist of women requesting Shekab to expand to their cities outside of Pakistan.
Looking to the future, SheKab is on a mission to expand the current 1 million women paving the way in the Pakistani workforce to support 7 million working women across the country and beyond.
“I see women who I know personally, my friends, my aunts register with SheKab and they use it. At the end of the day, I feel so good about what we’ve done and motivated for what’s to come.”
Around the world, the plight on women takes on varying forms; it has different social, economic and political outcomes and is scrutinized by many. For the women of Pakistan, one issue is a mobile one now being combated with a fostering carpool culture that is safe, affordable and reliable.
The story of SheKab is ultimately one of purpose; driven by a founders’ desire to not only solve a local problem but to inspire women in her country to achieve independence.
“The men that I had seen in the tech circles here would not have rolled up their sleeves and done something for us. This was something that I wanted to fix myself. Growing up, I’d seen a disparity in the treatment of girls when they are growing up. They are put in a certain box. Even when I was very little as a four-year-old girl, I would stand up and say ‘treat me like my brother.’ If he’s allowed to do something, why can’t I?”
