Tripda Shutting down Ridesharing Service

Less than a year after receiving $11 million in funding, Tripda has announced that it will close it’s ridesharing service on March 4th. They were one of a number of new companies that have emerged in the past few years to facilitate sharing of transportation and costs on long drives.

Here’s the relevant portion of the Tripda announcement:

Transforming the way people travel has always been our goal. We believe that through ride sharing people can travel in a cheaper, greener, friendlier and faster way. And for two years, we have helped bringing this vision to bear.

Tripda helped over 1 million travelers, in 13 different countries, to find a match and have a genuinely great trip. Meeting through our platform, drivers and passengers had an unparalleled collaborative experience, rating each other with 5 stars in 95% of the rides. And this is exactly what we aimed for.

And yet, despite the success of our community, our operating costs became too high, an we had to reassess our prospects. Given the inherent challenge of funding our operation as it continues to grow, we realized it was time to bring our ride to an end, discontinuing the Tripda platform as it is today.

 

This announcement leaves room for Tripda to pivot to some new venture, but still it’s disappointing to see true ridesharing companies (as opposed to peer-to-peer taxis) fail. Last July I reported on Tripda’s plans for expansion around the world, leveraging their strong launch in the Philippines.

To see a list of ridesharing companies still operating, check out my table of sharing economy travel services and filter on the sub-category “Ridesharing.”