Tripid.ph, an online carpooling service, gets USD 50K from Kickstart Ventures

Philippine startup Tripid.ph has announced today that it has received USD 50K in investment from Kickstart Ventures, a seed stage fund that is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Globe Telecom.

Tripid.ph is a peer-to-peer carpooling website — users can post rides or join one on its website by searching for their current location and destinations they’re interested in. They can also ‘follow’ routes and be notified when a ride becomes available. The service promises that its trips are cheaper than taking a cab in Metro Manila.

Minette Navarrete, president of Kickstart Ventures, told the Bobbery that it invested in Tripid because of its bold ideas, great team, and solid execution.

“The beauty of Tripid is that it reminds us that sometimes, the solution isn’t about adding infrastructure, it’s about increasing the usage/utility of existing infrastructure,” she told the Bobbery.

Tripid has been busy securing partnerships with organizations in the country.

Besides Globe, it has also partnered with AIESEC, a global student-driven organization, events like ADB’s ‘No Impact Week’ and technopreneur summit Go Negosyo, as well as eight universities in Luzon, the largest island in the Philippines and home to Manila and Quezon City.

Peer-to-peer carpooling services — in which the inventory comes from users rather than the service provider — has become a trend to watch in Asia. But being a rather recent phenomenon, it remains pretty much an unknown quantity.

Tripid.ph, as a pioneer of peer-to-peer carpooling in the Philippines, will provide a test case of whether the market is ready for it.