Not Everyone Wants to Book a Ride Through an App — And That's Fine

Ask most ride-sharing startups how customers should book a trip, and you'll get one answer: open the app. It's the default assumption baked into the entire industry. But intercity travel in Bangladesh doesn't fit neatly into that assumption — and pretending it does means quietly excluding a large share of potential riders."Who gets left out by "app-only"? Think about who actually needs an intercity ride. It's not only smartphone-native, app-fluent users in Dhaka. It's a small business owner in a district town who's more comfortable making a phone call than navigating a new app. It's an older relative booking a trip for family members. It's someone with a poor data connection on the day they need a ride most, or simply someone who trusts a human voice confirming their booking over a screen. For an intercity service — where a single trip might be a multi-hour, meaningful journey rather than a quick local hop — that trust gap matters more, not less. Designing for how people actually book, not how we wish they did SAFAR is built to be booked the way the customer prefers, not the way that's easiest for us to support. That means the app, yes — but also the website, a call center line, and WhatsApp, all leading to the same verified driver network and the same one-way pricing. This isn't about adding channels for the sake of it. It's about recognizing that "convenience" means different things to different people. For one rider, convenience is three taps in an app. For another, it's a two-minute phone call with someone who can confirm the details out loud. Both are valid, and a real solution to intercity travel can't optimize for only one of them. Why this matters more as we scale As SAFAR expands beyond the Dhaka–Chittagong corridor into new districts and eventually nationwide, the diversity of how people want to book will only grow. A platform that only works for the most tech-comfortable segment of the market will hit a ceiling fast — not because demand isn't there, but because the booking experience itself becomes the barrier. Multi-channel access isn't a side feature we added late. It's a recognition that solving the "double fare" problem only matters if the solution is actually reachable by the people who need it most.