FAQ

PoolCircle is a ride share network that lets you carpool with others you can trust. PoolCircle is available on iOS and Android and as a web application. PoolCircle is free to use.

PoolCircle leverages your network of connections, or "Circles", to build a safe platform for carpooling. Users can choose which set of connections they want to carool with. Additionally, users can provide their corporate email address and social profiles to earn Trust Points and demonstrate better user rating. Refer the FAQ sections MyCircle, Social Profile and Trust Rating for more information on safety aspect of PoolCircle.

You need to be a registered user to be able to carpool on PoolCircle. Registration is FREE and you may register with your email address or with your Facebook account.

PoolCircle allows the users to call each other to set up a carpool. In order to ensure that users can call each other with confidence, we require all registered users to have a validated phone number.

Once registered, you need to set up one or more trips with the required details - Starting point, destination, time and whether you are looking for a car owner or a passenger.

PoolCircle will find others in the same ares who are also looking for carpools and you will be shown the list of available matches.

You may call or message the other person to set up a call - pick up and drop off points, expected fuel share. Alternately, the other person might call you to set up a carpool.

Schedules - Use Schedules for your regular commutes - office commute, weekend yoga classes etc. We will automatically publish these trip for you. You may Pause / Delete these at any time.

On Demand - Use On Demand for one off trips, maybe an airport drop off or a pick up from the mall

InterCity - Use Intercity for longer trips. PoolCircle will use a larger radius to find other users for you to carpool with.

PoolCircle allow you to choose which network of connections or "Circles" you want to carpool with. We allow you to choose your Corporate Colleagues, Facebook friends and LinkedIn connections to your MyCircle.

PoolCircle additionally provides you Trust Points for completing your profile - 40 Trust Points for a validated corporate email address, 20 Trust Points for a valid Facebook signin and 20 Trust Points for a valid LinkedIn signin.

Completing your Social Profile is optional and you can carpool with PoolCircle without completing your Social Profile, but you will not be able to Customize your MyCircle without your Social Profile.

No one! Your corporate email address / Facebook account or your LinkedIn account will not be shared with anyone. When PoolCircle finds you carpools for your trip the other person will be able to see your email extension (if you set up your corporate email account as vijay.sharma@mycompany.com, the other person will see xxxxx@mycompany.com). If you set up your Facebook and LinkedIn account in your Social Profile, the other person will see that "Validated Facebook account" and "Validatd LinkedIn account"

PoolCircle does not share your Social Profile with anyone

As part of your profile completion, you can set up the fuel share you expect to be paid by the passengers that you take along. You may set this up in your local currency at a per km or per mile basis. When you offer rides and others see it, they will be able to see the Expected Fuel Share that you have set up. At the end of the journey, you should expect to be paid that for the distance travelled.

At this point we do not. However, this is part of our roadmap and should be available in subsequent releases.

MyCircle (Left Hand Side menu -> Community -> MyCircle) lets you decide who you want to carpool with. When you search for carpools PoolCircle will only show you other users who match your MyCircle settings. Additionally, your searches will only be shown to others users who match you MyCircle settings.

1. I can carpool with anyone
2. I want to carpool with only women (this is available only to Female users)
3. Customize MYCircle - You can set up any combination of Corporate colleagues, Facebook friends and LinkedIn connections (both 1st and 2nd connections)

When set up MyCircle as "Corporate Colleagues", PoolCircle will only show you carpools with others who have the same (validated) email extension as yours. Setting up a very closed MyCircle setting might reduce the chance of your finding carpools since users who are going the same way as you are, will not be shown to you when you customize MyCircle.

Yes, the search result at any time will be shown as per your MyCircle. So, if you change your MyCircle from "I can carpool with anyone", "I want to carpool with only women", PoolCircle will start showing you only women users immediatly after that.

Inviting your friends helps you find more carpools since the number of carpools offered and carpools searched for increases when more users participate in the network. In addition, you earn 20 Trust Points every friend / contact who joins based on your invitation.

When you invite someone from the Facebook friends (available on iOS and Android apps), Contacts (available only on iOS app) and Email (available on Android, iOS and web versions), the person will receive a Promo Code along with the invitation. When the person registers, they would have to enter the Promo Code in the PoolCircle app for you to receive the 20 Trust Points.

Trust Points are the building blocks which add up to your Star Rating. More your Trust Points, higher your Star Rating. You earn Trust Points as follows:

• Phone number validation - 20 Trust Points
• Validated Corporate Email address - 40 Trust Points
• Validated Facebook account - 20 Trust Points
• Validated LinkedIn accounts - 20 Trust Points
• Invite a friend and when they join PoolCircle - 20 Trust Points for each friend
• There is no ceiling on the Trust Points that you can earn.

The Trust Points that you earn roll up to your Star Rating, on a scale of 1 star to 5 star

• Trust Points 20 or more - 1 star
• Trust Points 50 or more - 2 star
• Trust Points 100 or more - 3 star
• Trust Points 250 or more - 4 star
• Trust Points 1000 or more - 5 star

When you search for carpools and PoolCircle finds carpool partners for you, the other person will be able to see your Trust Points and your Star Rating (you will be able to see theirs too). Note that they would not see your email address or your Facebook or your LinkedIn accounts. They will only see your corporate email extension (xxxxx@mycompany.com). They would also see that you have set up a validated Facebook or LinkedIn account (but not actually see the account itself)

You can rate a person that you have carpooled with. In fact, even if you have not carpooled with someone and think they are cool, you can leave a rating for them - on a scale of 1 to 5 thumbs (with 5 being the best). Peer rating is a great way to ensure safety in the platform and PoolCircle users can make informed decisions about who they are carpooling with.

Please note that the other person will be able to see the rating that you provide to them.

When you search for carpools and PoolCircle finds carpool partners for you, the other person will be able to see the number of ratings that you have received and the average rating that you have received.

While daily commute like home to office offer a great opportunity to carpool, intercity travellers can choose to share rides with others. We are sure it is not hard to find 3 others going from Bangalore to Chennai or Mumbai to Pune on a saturday morning. We believe that the cost of fuel and toll, if shared 4 ways is just around half the cost of AC train travel.

Choose Carpool from the Left Hand Side menu, click Add Trip and choose the InterCity ride. The selection in the Source and Destination is specificatlly customized to ensure that Cities and towns can be added.

Yes we do! We use a larger radius for our carpool matches. So, when you search for a carpool from Bangalore to Chennai or Mumbai to Pune, PoolCircle will find others from anywhere in the source city to anywhere in the destination city.

You cannot set up a different Expected Fuel Share for InterCity rides, but you may modify the Expected Fuel Share just before your InterCity trip.

Explara is an online event platform and takes the role of making events simple to organize and delightful to participate in.

One of the biggest pain points of attending an event is the driving there and the parking hassles. Event organizers too face challenges of car parking management. We partnered with Explara to ensure that we can offer an integrated experience for the Event Organizer and for the attendee to carpool to the event.

As an Event Organizer, you can choose to offer carpool options to your attendees by clicking on the "Enable carpool using PoolCircle" option in the Event Setup -> Settings -> Marketplace Settings. Once this is done, every attendee will see the option to carpool to the event along with their invitiation.

As an attendee, you can register to carpool to the event by clicking on the Carpool to this event link in your invitation email. Tell us where you will come to the event from and where you will go afte the event.

PoolCircle will start finding other users who are going to the event from your area and users who are going to the same destination after the event, based on the event venue and the event time.