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Tired of trying to scour and secure transportation back to the hometown during festive seasons? Buses and trains not cutting it for you? Well, the introduction of a new ride-sharing service may be just the thing, then. It’s called Droupr, and it’s a local web-based, mobile-friendly service for Malaysians to share a ride together with someone driving a car and heading to the same destination.

Pairing together car owners about to make the journey to a specific location with passengers who are also looking to head to the same place, Droupr is essentially a car-pooling resource, with everyone sharing the cost of travel.

The system – which aims to give everyone a community-based, safe travelling experience – matches the available seats in cars with a real search engine, and its developers say it has been engineered to create a secure, trust-based community with declared identities and full member profiles.

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Here’s how it works. Users register in the system using their real name with a valid e-mail address and phone number. To ensure passengers safety, the system offers members the option to include their Identity Card and house address verification.

Members then proceed to key in details of where they want to go and when, and will get a list of drivers heading to the same destination, with their journey history and a price – which is a fraction of a ticket on public transport. The system will notify of the charge for the journey so that there are no overcharging issues.

A trip with Droupr allows the driver to offset their costs but not make a profit. Each passenger simply makes a fair contribution for his/her seat, and the driver covers the fuel and toll costs.

For example, a car with a full load of travellers heading from KL to George Town will only cost each passenger on a Droupr trip somewhere between RM30 to RM45, the cost being to cover travelling expenses. Car owners keep 100% of the contributions from their passengers. Droupr says it only charges a small booking fee from passengers to cover overhead costs.

Car owners will be able to set their own terms and preferences. One unique feature the system offers is the ability for members to choose “Ladies Only” for cars where both the drivers and passengers are female.