As part of its contribution to World Environment Day, ride-hailing app Uber has released a ‘Green Index’, which showed that with the launch of uberPOOL, it has effectively managed to reduce congestion and pollution in New Delhi.
The launch of uberPOOL in the city helped save 936,000 litres of fuel and 19,901,000 kilometres travelled, thereby curbing 2,203,000 kilogrammes of carbon dioxide emissions in New Delhi.
According to the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, the average occupancy of a car is just 28 per cent. Meaning, while a car can carry 4 people, it only carries 1.15 persons. Therefore, with the US-based cab aggregator’s carpool option, it aims to tackle this problem and get people into the habit of adopting public transportation.
Uber aims to significantly reduce carbon footprint in India and with 28 per cent trips in New Delhi being on the shared cab riding system, it is clocking success at a decent pace.
As Uber is locked in an intense battle for market leadership in India with homegrown firm Ola, it launched it UberPOOL option soon after ‘Ola Share’ was gaining popularity in the city.
“With the launch of uberPOOL in New Delhi, our goal was to get more people in fewer cars at the tap of a button,” Prabhjeet Singh, general manager, Uber Delhi and North India said. “As responsible corporate citizens, we are tirelessly working towards a future where every journey is a shared one”
UberPOOL was first introduced in Bengaluru in September 2015, and later expanded to six more cities across the country —Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai and most recently Pune.
Uber’s expansion in India
Uber is hiring more techies for its engineering centres in the country as it looks to roll out more innovations from India in areas like payments, bookings and rider and driver experience.
The company is also in discussion with National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to enable customers pay for rides using Unified Payment Interface (UPI).