FAST Wheels
A WhatsApp bot that helps 1,600+ university students find rides to campus. No app to download, you just send a message.
The Problem
FAST Wheels is a WhatsApp-based carpooling platform built for students at FAST-NUCES Karachi. Getting to campus is a real daily problem here — this turns finding a ride into sending a message, with no app to download.
It now serves 1,600+ registered students.
How It Works
I co-developed the whole thing: a Dockerized Node.js and Express backend, a MongoDB data model covering users, rides, conversations and OTP verification, and fuzzy location matching so riders and drivers on similar routes find each other.
Background jobs handle automated ride expiry and cleanup, and admin commands let organisers manage the system directly from WhatsApp. It runs in production on DigitalOcean.
Why It Matters
Most side projects never meet a real user. This one handles real rides for real students every day, which meant reliability, moderation and edge cases mattered far more than features.
