Tripda's abrupt demise

The news is yet to become official, but sources have confirmed that Rocket Internet is shutting down its carpooling start-up - Tripda. The young tech company started out from Brazil in June 2014, making its way to Pakistan six months later. Tripda couldn close its second round of funding, forcing its parent to cease Tripda operations globally.
Its a shame; the ridesharing application was doing well in Pakistan. Despite being the first workable stint of sharing economy in the country, Tripda Pakistan had the fourth largest user base among the 13 countries it operated in. In a recent interview, Tripda Pakistans country manager, Ahmed Usman told BR Research that the Lahore-Islamabad route was the second most lucrative one in terms of gross merchandise value (GMV) among all the routes Tripda actively manages globally.
In Pakistan, the company only had around fourteen months to establish its mark. If it had stayed a little longer, Tripda had the arsenal to disrupt the conventional long distance transport industry (buses and trains mainly), especially given the ongoing development of our road network and the booming 3G/4G and smartphone population.
The idea was that a person, travelling from Lahore to Islamabad or Karachi to Hyderabad, among other routes, in his personal vehicle could share the fuel cost by sharing the ride with people commuting on the same route. For the passenger, this boasted the opportunity for a speedier, more comfortable and cheaper ride to the destination.
Back in October, Tripda Pakistan had around 27,000 registered users, with a month-on-month growth of nearly 80 percent. According to Usman, the biggest challenge facing Tripda Pakistan was awareness. With rising internet penetration, that was bound to change. Recently, the company also embarked upon a social media advertisement campaign, generating over 170,000 views on Facebook.
It would be a relief for the likes of Daewoo bus service to see Tripda go down so abruptly, not because what the start-up achieved, but because of its potential. For the state of sharing economy in the country however, this is a setback. Tripda cracked the first successful sharing economy business model in Pakistan; now its all but dead.