Heetch: a fun way to return home!

We are always excited to share the stories of people who visit us here at Stone Soup and work amongst us for a while. Here is the story of Julien who works at the operations department of Heetch.

Heetch is a ride-sharing service that is helping young people to enjoy their night out by driving them home safely. It operates only at night (from 20h to 6h) and the drivers are young people who try to make your way home as fun as possible! “The idea came when we were trying to go home on a Friday night and we couldn’t find a taxi. In France the demand for taxis at a Friday or a Saturday night is very high but the taxi service is low and the drivers can be picky, especially when it comes to young people returning from parties. So we decided to develop Heetch in order to cover this high demand”.

There are two basic differences with a taxi service. First of all, the drivers are not professionals so they do not get paid. They can only pay back their annual car cost. Secondly, the passengers can give a free donation at the end of the ride in order to participate to the driver’s annual car cost. However, Heetch does not allow their members to get new rides when they have already made 6000€ a year, since this is not an actual profession.

Right now the app is up and running in France (Paris, Lyon and Lille), Poland (Warsow), Sweden (Stockholm), Italy (Milan) and Belgium (Brussles) and has about 500.000 active accounts. Their goal is to expand in one city every 2 or 3 months.

You can find out more about Julien’s work by visiting the website (in French) or you can find them on Facebook.