A group of young innovators launch a car-pooling app with EU support. As a student in Prishtina/ Priština, Eroll Gorçi had to travel several times a week from his hometown of Peja/ Peć approximately 80 km away. Taxis were too expensive and buses were not very frequent. Like many other commuters he therefore tried alternative solutions, checking if any of his friends or relatives would be driving to the capital, so he could share a ride. Eroll was a computer science and technology student and as he developed his IT skills he realised that filling the inter-city transport gap with a platform for car-pooling could be an interesting business opportunity. And thus began Udhë (the word means the “way” or” journey” in Albanian), the first car-pooling app in the southern part of the Balkansconnecting drivers with passengers.

“We wanted to test the approach first through social media before we went onto developing an app, and it worked.”

Eroll and his friends first discussed this idea a few years ago and initially agreed to launch a social media page where people who were interested in sharing a ride would be able to communicate and arrange joint travel. “We wanted to test the approach first through social media before we went onto developing an app, and it worked,” says Eroll. The ride-share group on Facebook gathered around 10,000 members in a short period. This proved that people were interested, and the team recognised an opportunity for developing a professional service.   They started to develop the app for drivers and passengers at the beginning of 2020. As they had very little experience in this type of endeavour, they applied to the EU-funded VentureUP project for technical assistance with a focus on prototyping. Eroll and his team benefited from webinars and tools for marketing, business modelling, and funding which were helpful in building their expertise. In addition, they focused on the systematic collection of data which offered a much firmer basis to build confidence in their business model and launch the app.

“The support provided by the European Union was crucial in developing and bringing our idea to life.”

 About the project The VentureUP – University of Pristina Venture Incubator project supported by the European Union in Kosovo provides students and start-ups the opportunity to develop job-creating businesses and increase their chances of meaningful employment in Kosovo. During the first incubation programme in 2019, seven starts ups with a total of 23 team members completed the programme. Of these, four start-ups registered as legal businesses generating revenues and employing a total of 15 people. In 2020, there were 12 start-ups with 31 team members who completed the second incubation programme. As a result of this, five legal businesses have been registered and are generating revenues and employing a total of 18 people. The app has been on the market through Google Play and the Apple store since January 2021. The online community now has over 30,000 followers through social media, and close to 15,000 users of the mobile app. They solve transport problems for several hundred passengers daily. The four-person team is now looking for more significant turnover and help in securing an angel investment for expansion. They are planning to launch the service in Albania and in Balkan markets where the EU’s biggest ride-share platform has failed. Eroll explains that in the Kosovo education system there is a lack of teaching on entrepreneurship and the ways of developing an idea into a product and on monetising ideas. For him, incubator projects are therefore crucial in enabling the first steps on business and entrepreneurship. “The support provided by the European Union was crucial in developing and bringing our idea to life,” he says.