Uber revamping app to bring down cancellations, maximise earnings for drivers

Uber (Representative image)

Uber is revamping its backend tech to introduce upfront pricing and location details to drivers to bring down ride cancellations in India and across the world, Manikandan Thangarathnam, senior director of mobility and platforms at the ride-hailing firm has told Moneycontrol.

“There is an offer card which gets prompted to a driver before accepting the ride, we share details of the destination, customer rating, mode of payment and more upfront, so a driver can choose whether to take this ride or not, thereby bringing down the cancellations,” Thangarathnam said.

While the company has already introduced customer rating, mode of payment and destination features, upfront pricing is being tested in a few cities to study the market reactions and imbalances, if any.

“Let’s say if we were about 1.6 times to 1.8 times our cancellation rate during the pandemic, which was the highest… Now we have come very close to the pre-pandemic levels…Our aim to bring that number to zero, there should be zero cancellations,” Thangarathnam said.

To maximise driver earnings, Uber has integrated Uber Ride and Uber Eats in other countries and Uber Connect in India.

“Earlier we onboarded a bunch of people as drivers, then we onboarded a bunch of people as delivery people…Now that we have both, and we are leaders in both we created a program called One Earner, where you can be an earner on our platform, we will see how we can maximize your earnings,” Thangarathnam said.

Through this program, the Uber Earner can drive people through the ride-sharing app based in the morning and when demand is low can become a delivery partner, he said.

“We have close to 6,000 cities where Uber is operating on Uber Eats and 10,000 cities where we are operating on Uber Rides…And so we are trying to see that very unique proposition where our earners are super happy to stick to our platform because we can maximize their earnings,” he said.

While the company is placed well in terms of demand, in order to increase supply, Uber is also engaging with fleet partners.

“We have the usual IC (Independent Car) programme, where if I have a car, I can come, get registered to Uber get an Uber driver app and I can proceed. However, if you have a fleet program, if you have a company where you're managing 100 cars or 50 cars, you can come as a fleet partner and we will give u the software to manage your entire fleet,” Thangarathnam said.

The Fleet Programme is in the pilot stage in India, while it is active in the US, Hong Kong and the UK.