[ Idea ]Found 12 Nov · 6 Devpost

PoolKit

Shared cabs for hackathon attendees, with fares split automatically.

Should you build this?Revisit

HackHQ's pricing covers judging, not cab logistics, and no organiser has paid for the manual version.

7 products · 8 sources13 Nov

The problem

Students arriving at offline hackathons and college fests take separate cabs to the venue, so they overpay and sometimes arrive late or stranded at night.

Attendees come from many cities and reach the same station or airport at similar times, so each one pays for a solo cab. Organisers track this by hand in WhatsApp groups and spreadsheets, and reimburse travel from paper receipts.

Seen in 6 Devpost

The idea

PoolKit groups registered attendees into shared cabs to the venue, sends each rider their fare share, and reconciles receipts for organisers.

1Share your arrival station or airport, time and preferences.
2Get matched into a 3-4 person cab within a 30-minute window.
3Get a WhatsApp group with pickup time, meeting point and UPI payment link.

Price: Free for events up to 50 participants. ₹4,999 per event for up to 500 participants, which covers the organiser dashboard, the WhatsApp bot and receipt reconciliation. ₹14,999 per event for sponsor-funded finals with a travel budget, which adds reimbursement exports and a savings report. This is below HackHQ's published $199/$599 per-event tiers, because Indian student events can't pay those.

[ The six checks ]Failed at check 4 of 6

1Not built in alreadyPassed

2An AI agent can't do itPassed

3Nothing similar existsPassed

4People pay for thisFailed here

5Strong scoresNot checked

6Real sourcesNot checked

1 · Not built in alreadyPassed

2 · An AI agent can't do itPassed

3 · Nothing similar exists

Why it failed

Check 4 · No one would pay

Reach is plausible, since Adarsh can get 10 free pilots through GDG, Takshila and hackathon circles. But there is no real willingness-to-pay signal: HackHQ's $199/$599 pricing is real, but it covers judging and submissions, not cab logistics, and nobody is shown paying for the manual version.

Who paysThe organiser pays: a GDG on Campus lead, hackathon organiser, fest committee, or a DevRel or community team running a sponsor-funded offline finale. They pay from the event budget. Participants use it free.

Who uses itParticipants of offline hackathons, fests and club events at campuses and venues in Indian metros (starting with Kolkata: Howrah, Sealdah and the airport to venue). They are student builders aged 18-24.

First 10 users1) DM 30 organisers and DevRel people I know from Indian builder and hackathon circles, and the GDG on Campus and Takshila leads. Offer a free pilot for their next offline event in return for a before/after cost case study. 2) Post a 60-second demo on X and LinkedIn using a fake event: paste a participant sheet and get cab pools with fare splits. 3) Run the first pool myself at a Kolkata offline hackathon and a college fest, using my own attendance as the test. 4) Ask the first 3 happy organisers to forward the link to their organiser networks, such as Superteam India chapters and other clubs. Target: 10 organisers, with at least 3 paying, within 8 weeks.

Why not just AIAn organiser's own agent can't see everyone's arrival time. It can't verify that the riders are actual registered participants, and it can't make strangers trust each other enough to share a cab. It also can't collect each person's share by UPI or reconcile receipts against a travel budget. The product is data from many people, trust between them, and money flows. An agent plus a skill can write a spreadsheet formula, but it can't coordinate 200 students at 5am.

What already exists

7 products checked

ProductVerified attendees onlyShared cab poolsWhatsApp pool updatesFare split with UPIOrganiser receipts and exportsOverlap with idea

This ideaWhat PoolKit plans to do

5 / 5

Discord/Slack carpool channels, WhatsApp groups and spreadsheets

[ What would make it pass ]3 steps

01
Get three organisers to pay a deposit for a manual pool before any build.
02
Run a manual pilot at one Kolkata event and log cost saved per rider.
03
Show a priced before/after case study to five organisers, then ask for payment.

[ Inspired by ]What it borrows, and what's different

Central Carpool Connect (Central Hacks winner)
Campus ridesharing for students at one university. It serves one campus's daily commute and has no buyer. PoolKit targets one-off multi-college events, groups by arrival time and station, and charges the organiser.
Syinq
Verified college carpooling that groups students for cabs to stations and airports and splits the fare. Syinq needs each campus to adopt it. PoolKit is event-first: participants join through the organiser's registration list, so there is no network-effect cold start. It also adds organiser budget reconciliation, which Syinq doesn't offer.
HackHQ
Per-event paid hackathon management with public pricing. HackHQ runs registration and judging. PoolKit covers the physical logistics of reaching the venue and plugs into any registration platform through a CSV upload.

[ Sources ]8 cited

Hackathon organiser guides explicitly tell organisers to collect attendee travel itineraries and arrange transport. Today this is a manual task.hackerearth.com ↗
The Wikimedia hackathon handbook suggests connecting travellers who land at similar times so they can share taxis. It is advice with no tool behind it.mediawiki.org ↗
Indian students pool cabs to stations and airports through fragmented WhatsApp groups. Multiple student-built pooling apps exist, so the pain is real. They are scoped to a single campus, not to events spanning many colleges.github.com ↗
Syinq, a college carpooling app, targets verified campus communities in India with cab pooling to stations, airports and events. This confirms demand and shows the single-campus approach is occupied.syinq.com ↗
Central Hacks winners built campus ride-sharing, a marketplace, furniture redistribution and delivery tools, so the campus sharing problem keeps coming up in hackathons.devpost.com ↗
Hackathon organisers already pay per event for tooling. HackHQ publishes $199 and $599 per-event tiers and earns only from organiser fees.hackhq.io ↗

Why it failed

Check 4 · No one would pay

Students arriving at offline hackathons and college fests take separate cabs to the venue, so they overpay and sometimes arrive late or stranded at night.

PoolKit groups registered attendees into shared cabs to the venue, sends each rider their fare share, and reconciles receipts for organisers.

Why it failed

What already exists

Students arriving at offline hackathons and college fests take separate cabs to the venue, so they overpay and sometimes arrive late or stranded at night.

PoolKit groups registered attendees into shared cabs to the venue, sends each rider their fare share, and reconciles receipts for organisers.

Why it failed

What already exists

How it was checked