Ride share app offers parents help transporting their kids
Getting your kids to their extracurricular can be arduous, but business owner Marta Jamorzik and her VanGo app are hoping to ease the burden for families in southwestern Connecticut.
Since launching the app in June, the Norwalk-based company has joined the international wave of ridesharing services, this one specifically serving parents in Fairfield County.
“We’re really a company serving working parents,” Jamorzik said. “I think you can think of us as a specialized Uber for kids or Uber for teens.”
Jamorzik said she developed the app to provide families with a safe way to help transport their kids — a help for working parents with busy schedules.
The Norwalk resident remembers both her parents working full time when she was growing up
“Coming to that same stage of my life where my husband and I are starting to plan to have kids, it just struck me that not that much has changed in the world of parenting and that support system hasn’t been expanded in any way,” She said.
Though the app is usable for all families, the Norwalk resident said she launched the startup with working mothers in mind. After a long day’s work, she said, women regularly have even more to do at home at the end of the day.
“I strongly believe that working moms need a support system to help them balance both their career and their family, and I really want to help women and support that goal,” Jamorzik said. “Our goal as a company is ultimately to eliminate and equalize that second shift.”
Before launching the app, Jamorzik, worked in the corporate and tech industries, focusing on sales.
She was also the co-founder of Claire, a business-to-business sales company that predicted how a product would perform before entering the market. The company earned her a spot Forbes’s 30 under
30 in retail and Ecommerce in 2017. “I see this as a need for working moms and it’s definitely a product that I would want to use with my own kids,” she said.
Over the years, drivers in some large-scale ride-sharing services have been convicted of sexual assault or abduction. As a result, Jamorzik said, VanGo doesn’t skimp on safety precautions.
“Our vetting process for our drivers is the No. 1 most important thing that we do as a company,” she said. “This type of screening process has led to a really great group of drivers who are all local and picking up rides in their local communities.”
Along with passing background checks, supplying references and being fingerprinted, drivers must have extensive driving experience and more than three years of professional experience in child care.
As a result, Jamorzik said, only a small portion of drivers are accepted for their applicant pool. The company employs roughly 50 drivers throughout Fairfield County with the majority being local mothers as well, she said.
VanGo drivers, who are paid per ride, receive a ride request for kids through the app and can accept the request based on their schedules and the requirements for the request.
“Taking that into consideration, they can decide whether that ride makes sense for them,” she said.
A new feature added to the app allows for parents to find their favorite drivers and add them to their “favorite driver” list, giving drivers priority access to any rides the family posts in the future.
Users can also schedule rides up to four weeks in advance. Since launching, Jamorzik said, the app has been downloaded more than
1,000 times.
For more on the app, visit the VanGo website.