Uber India launches 'Hourly Rentals' for multi-hour, multi-stop needs in 17 cities

Uber has launched a new feature named ‘Hourly Rentals’, a 24x7 on-demand, intracity service on its platform which would allow the riders to retain a car with its driver for several hours, and make multiple stops on their journey.

Currently, the feature is available in 17 Indian cities such as Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Chennai, among others. The cars can be rented by the riders at an affordable price point of Rs 189 for a one-hour/ten-kilometer package. Moreover, customers will also have the option to select from multiple hourly packages, up to a maximum of 12-hours. 

“As our cities start moving again, many of our riders will have new use cases and different needs from Uber, one of which is keeping their Uber with them for a longer duration as they go through their day. Hourly Rentals is our solution for that”, said Prabhjet Singh, Head of Cities of Uber via a press statement. 

Importantly, the latest feature is quite similar to ‘uberHIRE’which was introduced in Bengaluru in 2017 and allowed users to rent a cab for a certain duration of the day. Last year in September, Uber’s rival Ola too had launched self-drive rental services in Bengaluru. 

The development also comes in the backdrop of the Covid-19 outbreak having brought a sudden drop in revenues of many businesses, especially, ride-hailing, hospitality, and travel firms. During this situation of crisis, every company is trying all the possible features and steps to compensate for the losses incurred during the last 2 months of lockdown.

Two weeks back, Uber had also laid off 600 of its employees in India as it witnessed a sharp decline in its business due to a nationwide lockdown.