Uber, a ride-hailing behemoth firm, is all set to change its policy and approach to win over Indian market.
“We are experimenting things and moving towards full transparency and this is the first step”, Daniel Graf, Uber’s VP and Head of Products, who is coming to India said to MoneyControl. It plans to earn back respect and trust it has lost over years among our users and driver partners. The company has been criticized as having a workplace hostile to women, hired two senior female executives in June.
“Technology alone will not do that. It is a lot about being good human beings and listening. One of the crucial reasons for our visit here in India is to talk to driver partners and listen to them, find out what works and what doesn’t. If I tell you everything is great, that is just not true. There is a lot of room for improvement and we are young,” he added.
Already many Uber senior team, including Manik Gupta, Head of Product, Marketplace and Maps; and Peter Deng, Head of Uber Rider Experience have been visiting major cities -Delhi, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad to address the issue.
The company has announced a slew of India –specific solutions including a new feature that allows Uber users to book a cab for friends and family in different cities. It has also started a nation-wide number of people to call and book a cab. This will expand its reach to non-smartphone riders.
To help the users fight patchy network and fluctuating internet connection, Uber launched offline destination search. The company is looking at every market and the available mapping infra to improve it to best.
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Uber has already completed 500 million trips in India. It operates in 29 Indian cities and has 2.85 lakh active driver partners on its platform. It sees about 8 million monthly active riders. It has more than 1000 employees working in the company.
The ride-hailing firm is valued at $69 billion. Till date, it has raised around $15 billion in funding. Uber said it has $7.2 billion of cash on hand. The company generated $6.9 billion in gross bookings and $2.9 billion in net revenue in fourth quarter. For all of 2016, Uber’s global losses, excluding its China business, totaled $2.8 billion.
