E-cycle sharing system in Sgr out of pilot with 5000 rides
Irfan Tramboo
Srinagar, Mar 19: First from J&K, the Co-Founder of Srinagar-based start-up ‘Curve Electric,’ which previously launched Kashmir’s first e-bicycle sharing system here, has been chosen for the renowned Global Changemaker Fellowship-2023—a cohort of 33 persons from over 100 countries.
The Co-Founder, Sheikh Yameen told Excelsior that the fellowship strives to address SDG-based concerns through entrepreneurial action and youth participation, and gives young people the opportunity to effect long-term and scalable change by working along the lines of 17 SDGs.
The fellowship provides changemakers with the opportunity to gain global knowledge, community, training, and resources to help them become more effective change partners and grow their efforts.
“For the fellowship, you will either have to apply or someone nominates you; in my case, I was nominated and after multiple rounds of interview and after they analysed the work, I was selected,” he said.
The 6-month fellowship, which is now in its third cohort, had over 2000 applications from 112 countries, and Yameen was chosen as one of the top 33. “Our fellowship has begun and during the fellowship period, the fellows will get the one-to-one mentorship apart from refining our business models,” he said.
Notably, ‘Curve Electric’ is the start-up that launched the first e-bicycle sharing system in Srinagar, which received a tremendous response from the public and has already exited the pilot phase, with plans to expand its presence across the city in the coming days.
The fellowship which has been awarded to Yameen has a model of 5 Cs for bringing change in society and achievement of SGD goals. “There are people who are doing different things in different parts of the world, and getting to interact with them will help greatly,” he said.
Concerning the importance of the fellowship, he said, the entrepreneurs do not get the relevant mentorship. “The fellowship will have domain experts who have already executed works globally and that will help.”
On discussing the e-bicycle sharing system in Srinagar, he stated that the response from the general public and tourists has been amazing, with 5000 trips completed in the last two and a half months and a total mileage of 45 thousand kilometres.
“As of today, the weekend wait time is approximately 2 hours due to the response. More specifically, females account for 25-30% of ridership; while numerous stations are functioning; as of now we are not expanding it keeping in view the constructions going on across the city,” he said.
He said that once the cycling paths are put in place across the city, they will go with the increase in the fleet size as well as the number of docking stations.
“The fleet is the same because we were aiming for 5000 rides and 50 thousand kilometres during the pilot; we wanted to analyse the data and feedback from the people before moving forward; now that we are done, we are waiting for the cycling tracks to be completed,” he said.
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