Hitch Aims to Make Hitchhiking a Ride in Texas Safe and Seamless

Hitch can hook riders up with a ride from Austin to Houston without ever putting a thumb in the air and no need to stand beside the road.

The Austin-based startup wants to make hitching a ride from Austin to Houston easy and seamless and next year, it plans to expand to other cities.

The idea came from the frustration Kush Singh and Tanuj Girish, freshmen at the University of Texas at Austin, experienced trying to get an affordable ride home to Houston and Dallas from Austin. They thought there had to be a better way than taking an expensive plane ride or riding the bus.

So, they came up with a city ridesharing service, Hitch, which provides rides back and forth from Austin to Houston from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. seven days a week. The average price is $25. Hitchhikers book rides using an iPhone or Android app and Hitch’s system connects them with a driver with as little notice as one hour before departure. The parties meet at a coffee shop near the route and drop off at a similar location in the destination city.

Hitch went through the Longhorn Startup Program and is one of the portfolio companies of Genesis Program, a fund that provides pre-seed capital to student entrepreneurs at the University of Texas at Austin. But Singh and Girish have dropped out of UT to work on their startup fulltime.

They officially launched Hitch this month. And uShip Founders Matt Chasen and Jay Manickam have invested in Hitch and Chasen has joined the company’s board and Manickam serves as an advisor, Singh said.

To date, Hitch has raised almost $250,000. It has enrolled more than 50 drivers and another 1,000 users.

Within the next 18 months, Hitch plans to expand to provide ridesharing services within the entire Texas Triangle, including Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin. The company has three employees, including two interns and a full-time director of engineering.

While there have been a few other startups that have tried to solve the city to city ridesharing problem, Hitch has a unique model that allows for same day bookings, Singh said.