Ryde started off as an on-demand carpooling app and has now extended its portfolio to nine services. With expansion plans in place, the company needed more transparency in driver chats and tracking services, and needed to add enhanced features while preparing for soft launches in different markets.

Challenges

With Ryde’s execution of its expansion plans, the initial monolithic architecture used by them lacked agility and innovation, and made it challenging to scale a part of the system. The company wanted to enable quicker updates and improve overall business agility. Ryde also wanted to focus on the more strategic aspects of the business leaving the technical expertise and decision-making to their trusted tech partner. There was also a need to utilise an existing service and build their own applications on top of it. They also needed a database that could support real-time communication rather than one that requires them to develop a system themselves.

Searce Solution

After prolonged discussions and a detailed look at the challenges, experts from Searce and Google Cloud decided that the business should move from its multi-cloud architecture to a Google Cloud environment.

"It was seamless dealing with Google Cloud, but when Searce came into the picture, its team members doubled the speed of execution and increased the pace of development," says Nitin Dolli, Chief Technology Officer, Ryde Technologies. "I learned a lot working with both teams."

To implement location-based tracking and other features needed to deliver its tracking and chat services, we came to a conclusion that Firestore, a cloud-hosted NoSQL database, would be able to support these add-ons. Ryde was able to scale applications seamlessly, update them quickly and efficiently, support its soft-launch program and deliver driver tracking and chat services.

Business Impact

• Google Cloud Billing system provided insights that the company could use for their growth by optimising its resources
• The company can focus on executing its business plans instead of monitoring their systems as the service uptime exceeds 99.9%
• Improved response speeds by 70% with Cloud CDN
• Completed migration without any disruption or compromise in the user experience. The business now holds driver data and documentation in a stable, resilient database environment that supports features and business activities such as user reviews, profiles, subscription systems, payments and bonuses
• Exploring new business opportunities with BigQuery Analytics. With BigQuery and Google Cloud, they can leverage the data gathered from different sources such as real-time supply and demand and capture customer reactions to campaigns to achieve customer excellence
• Accommodate the unexpected demand surges during the pandemic with seemingly no impact on the level of performance

About Ryde Technologies

Founded as an on-demand carpooling app, Ryde Technologies provides a range of transportation services, including carpool, private hire and taxis. Established in 2015, the business has been working on expansion plans into markets such as Malaysia.