Bicycle sharing service, JoBike, started its operation in Dhaka on Sunday as a pilot scheme just one year into its introduction in the tourist city of Cox’s Bazar last January.
The country’s first two-wheeler on demand will now be available in Mirpur DOHS as a pilot basis started with 50 bicycles, Mehedi Reza, founder and chief executive of Jobike, told The New Nation.
Apart from Cox’s Bazar, the service has already been launched commercially in two public universities in Jahangirnagar and Chittagong.
“We got extraordinary response from our customers in those three places and that’s why we are moving to the capital and are now targeting to launch the service commercially here within two months,” said Reza.
For every minute, a rider will be charged Tk 1 in Dhaka, the same as Cox’s Bazar. However, on the two university campuses, the service is being offered for Tk 3 every five minutes.
JoBike is a mobile application which enables users to find bicycles for use on
a temporary basis. After downloading application users will have to open an account and then by scanning the QR code they can easily unlock the bicycles for use.
The JoBike application has already been downloaded 35,000 times and it is increasing every day and on average every day their bikes are being used about 3,000 times.
Currently, 100 bikes are running in Jahangirnagar University, 50 in Cox’s Bazar and another 50 in Chittagong University.
However, within this week they will add another 50 bikes in Chittagong University as the demand is very high, Reza added.
“Our plan is to make the service popular within one month in the capital and move for some residential areas like Basundhara.”
JoBike also donated twenty bicycles for accelerating development works at the Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, he added.
As it is a very environment friendly transport system, this kind of bicycle sharing service is very popular in different other countries like China and Singapore.
