STAXY is a student-exclusive ridesharing app which aims to save students money whilst reducing their carbon footprint.

Alumni set up new student exclusive carpooling app

James Campion (BSc Economics and Politics, 2020) and William Line (BSc Politics, Philosophy and Economics, 2020) have partnered up with University of Bath graduate, William Hughes, to launch STAXY, the first student-exclusive ridesharing app which aims to save students money whilst reducing their carbon footprint.

STAXY is a free app which allows students with cars to post journeys they’re taking and then students with a common destination can join as a passenger and pay using Apple or Google Pay. Student safety is at the heart of the app as all users have to sign up and register with a university email allowing it to be verified that they have a student profile. Additionally on the app, users can create private groups in which they can share journeys exclusively with those members, there is a review and ratings function for both drivers and passengers, and there are plans to link users social media profiles so other users can see mutual connections.

William and James were inspired to set up STAXY and start a green car-share solution to the student transport problem that they experienced first-hand. An initial discussion took place whilst sat in their kitchen during the second year of their studies then in following months this progressed and finally in the summer of 2019 they wrote a rough business plan on how it could work.

They said that there were three initial reasons why they set up STAXY:

“Firstly, the difficulty we had trying to travel home on a student budget. Train tickets to London were always expensive and it meant the often we weren’t able to go home because we could afford it, but we knew that there were always people driving back on weekends that we wish we could have shared the car journey with for a fraction of the cost.

“Secondly, we’re all conscious of our carbon footprint and what we can be doing to reduce it and we thought that tackling the problem of single occupancy cars and people making the same journeys in two different cars was one way we could try make a difference. This is also why we’re now looking to offset the carbon emissions of all the journeys that are made on the app.

“And the third reason was that some of our friends were driving for sport fixtures/day trips multiple times a week, and it was always difficult for them to know how much people should contribute for petrol. It was also just difficult for them to ask in the first place so we wanted to make that process as easy as possible.”

Following initial discussions, they worked on the idea for STAXY further in their final year but progress was slow due to balancing alongside commitments to their studies. However when lockdown hit in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic they revisited the project. William says: “We then reached out to the SETsquared team at Exeter* who gave us a lot of guidance regarding what sort of things we need to do to set up a business, as well as just talking to family and friends to get their advice. Our degrees also helped with our studies in Economics and the entrepreneurship modules we took had familiarised us with some of the aspects of starting a business but we also learnt a lot on the go over throughout the process. We then spent the next year in lockdown working on the app until we were ready to launch in September 2021.”

Since launching in September there has been a great reception to the app with almost 2,000 downloads having taken place and more than 350 journeys completed. William says: “Everyone seems really on board with the concept, but the big thing for us is that the more users on the app, the better the product is for students as the more journeys are posted and the more people are able to find alternative ways to get home and travel during term time.”

The trio plan to keep growing the app across the UK over the next couple of years; they’re currently focussed in the South-West but are looking at a number of other universities where they believe their app would be beneficial to the students and the universities themselves. Watch this space!

You can download STAXY for free on iOS and Android as well as keep up to date via Facebook, and Instagram

*James, William and William received funding to launch the app through the Student Startups programme at the University of Exeter, and have recently enrolled in the SETsquared Exeter Foundations programme.

Date: 11 October 2021