Travelling alone
- Who's with you
- Nobody
- The fare
- Paid in full
5,000+ students verified on GangUp to travel in groups
In early 2025, muggings were rising in Dhaka, and students felt unsafe travelling alone. My co-founders Fahim Ahmed and Mahir Abdullah had an idea: students going the same way share one vehicle and split the fare. The three of us built GangUp as a not-for-profit. I was its product engineer, and I questioned every idea before we built it.
At a glance
- Students verified
- 5,000+
- Gangs created
- ~25
- Role
- Co-founder, product engineer
- Timeframe
- Feb – mid 2025
The problem
Students felt unsafe on the road
After the July Revolution of 2024, the police and law and order broke down across the country, and muggings rose in Dhaka. Students felt it most when they travelled alone.
Fahim and Mahir came to me with an idea. Students going the same way would share one vehicle. Travelling as a gang would make them safer, and splitting the fare would make it cheaper. They asked whether we could build it.
In a gang
- Who's with you
- Verified students going the same way
- The fare
- Split between the gang
Four questions
What I asked before we built it
All three of us had input. My job as the product engineer was to question each idea. I raised these four questions, and we worked through each one together.
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Question 1
Is it safe?
What we built
Phone numbers stay hidden until a gang is approved
Members first talk in the gang's real-time chat inside GangUp. A member's phone number is revealed only once the gang is created and approved.
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Question 2
Is it easy for students?
What we built
A gang is a route students already travel
Each gang is a route, such as Mirpur 1 to United International University. A student finds the gangs going their way and asks to join one.
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Question 3
How do we know they're students?
What we built
Only students with a verified university email get in
Students sign up with their university email and verify it before they can join a gang.
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Question 4
How much do we cut?
What we built
We launched with verification, gangs and chat
Everything else waited. GangUp ran in the browser, so a link in a university Facebook group was enough to start.
The launch
It spread through university groups
Fahim and Mahir posted GangUp in their university groups, and it went viral. For a few months, it answered the problem of the time.
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5,000+
students verified through their university email
-
~25
gangs created across different areas
In the press
- The Business Standard English newspaper
- bdnews24.com In English
- The Front Page Story page
Other than these, many more Facebook pages and news portals covered GangUp.
Why we stopped
We couldn't continue past a few months
The need went away.
After a few months, students no longer needed a gang to feel safe on the way to university and back.
We couldn't make the trip itself safe.
Chat and hidden phone numbers made it safer to meet a gang. We had no answer for what happens after a gang forms, and for women especially that was a real issue. We considered location tracking, but it didn't feel like a real solution.
GangUp never made money. It was a not-for-profit effort to help the country's students with their commute.
Next case study
Hiring a product engineer?
I can start full-time in January 2027 with no notice period. Email me, or forward this page to your team.