UniPool - Campus Ride-Sharing App

Overview

UniPool is a ride-sharing app built for the NIT Delhi campus community. The idea is simple: if you're heading to the metro, the railway station, or anywhere off campus, chances are someone else is going the same way. UniPool lets you find them, share the cab or auto together, and split the fare — no vehicle needed, just a destination.

The app was built from scratch by a three-person student team from the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at NIT Delhi, and officially launched in the presence of the Director and Registrar of the institute. It is free to use, available as an Android APK at unipool.dev, and open to students, faculty, and staff.

The Problem It Solves

Getting around from a campus that isn't in the city centre is expensive when you're travelling alone. Taxis and autos to the metro, airport, or railway station cost significantly more per person than if you split with others heading the same way. The hard part has always been finding those people — coordinating over WhatsApp groups is messy, and public ride-sharing apps aren't built for a closed community.

UniPool solves this for the campus: everyone on the platform is verified through their institutional email, so you only ever travel with people from your own institute. The coordination — finding a trip, joining it, sorting out the details — all happens inside the app.

How It Works

Post or join a trip. Anyone can post a trip — set the destination, time, and a per-seat fare amount. Others heading the same way can see it on the app and request to join. The person who created the trip approves requests, so there's no obligation to accept everyone.

Coordinate over chat. Once you've joined a trip, you can sort out the pickup point, timing, and booking details in the in-app chat. No phone numbers are shared.

Travel and split. Book the cab or auto together and split the fare equally. After the trip, everyone can rate the experience.

Key Features

• Verified members only — Registration requires an NIT Delhi institutional email. Every member is confirmed to belong to the campus.
• Pink Mode — Women can filter trips to find or post rides exclusively among women.
• Open to the whole campus — Not just students. Faculty and institute staff can register and use the app too.
• In-app chat — Coordinate trip details without sharing personal contact information.
• Ratings — After each trip, members can rate each other, helping build trust across the community.
• Free, no platform cut — The fare split is agreed between members. UniPool doesn't take a percentage.

The Launch

UniPool was officially launched at the Director's office, NIT Delhi, in the presence of Prof. (Dr.) Ajay K Sharma, Director, and Prof. (Dr.) Hitesh Sharma, Registrar. The APK is available for direct download at unipool.dev — no app store required. A Play Store and App Store release is in progress.

How It Was Built

The app is built with React Native (via Expo), so a single codebase runs on both Android and iOS. Supabase powers the backend — handling user authentication, the database, real-time chat, and file storage (for profile photos). The real-time messaging uses Supabase's WebSocket layer, so messages appear instantly without refreshing.

The landing page at unipool.dev is a separate Next.js web app that handles APK distribution, waitlist sign-ups for the store releases, and inbound contact — fully optimised for search engines.

On the engineering side, the biggest challenges were building a reliable authentication system that couldn't be bypassed with a non-institutional email, making real-time chat work correctly across all states of the app, and distributing the APK directly before Play Store approval — something that required setting up a custom download and verification flow.