Singapore is one of the most expensive cities in the world. Naturally, owning a car is not a luxury that everyone can afford, high COE and petrol prices make it difficult. Therefore, it is not uncommon for parents to opt for school buses or public buses as a means of getting their kids to school.
However, school buses mean that your child needs to be up that much earlier. School buses arrive earlier as there are more children to pick up, more locations to stop at. As for public buses, depending on where you live, you might even need to transfer from one bus service to another in order to reach your child’s school. This meaning that your child would need to wake up even earlier.
How will Schoolber benefit me?
Toni and Charlemagne Teh, an entrepreneur couple who run a brain training and brain development centre, came up with the idea of Schoolber as a means to counter this problem. Schoolber, as the name might suggest, functions on a concept similar to that of the popular car and pick up service, Uber.
The app that will kick off in January 2017, is essentially a carpool service that hopes to benefit both children and their parents. Children will get an extra half hour or so of shut eye, parents of children save time in their daily morning routine and parent-drivers will have a secondary means to income.
If you are a parent that drives your child to school on a daily basis, you can sign up for the service. The service will then tag you with other school children in your area who are going the same way. The service will bring in parent-drivers an extra S$360 a month if a parent fetches 3 other children along with their own child, says TODAY.
The service could also help to ease the morning traffic congestion that many of us are familiar with. With fewer cars on the road during the morning peak hour, we can hope to see a decrease in the time taken to get from point A to B during the morning peak hour.
Head over to the next page to hear what other parents think about the new Schoolber app!
What are other parents saying?
The brains behind the idea, Toni and Charlemagne Teh, came up with the idea while sending their own 9-year-old to school one morning. Having passed a group of their child’s schoolmates waiting at a bus stop, Mr Teh saw and seized the business opportunity.
The app has received an overwhelming response, with Mr Teh telling TODAY that he is, “looking to hire another 300 parent-drivers to meet the current demand.”
However, some of the parents that we managed to speak to have some reservations about the idea. Erlynniqa Nis-Sarahfina, 23-year-old mother of one, feels that she, “still prefers a school bus as that way people would know there are kids on board. If it’s just cars, most drivers are reckless.”
Similarly, Jaya Mahesh, a 37-year-old mother of two, says, “As much as it would help me save time, I wouldn’t opt for it unless I knew the driver (parent) really well. Quite an unsafe world, this is these days!”
Perhaps once the service has been out in the market for a period of time, more parents might warm up to it. At the moment, as much as it promises convenience, it is still a foreign concept to many parents and could require some getting used to.
Photo Credit: Schoolber Pte Ltd
Is Schoolber for you?
The app will move into operation in January 2017 and you can already sign up to be a parent-driver on their website.
While the service promises to simplify life for you and give your child some extra time to sleep-in, parents have raised the issue of adjusting to and trusting parent-drivers and other drivers on the road.
We’d love to know what you think about Schoolber, would it be something you would be interested in and is it something you feel can and will benefit you and your child? Let us know in the comments below!
Source: TODAY Online
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