Online cab hailing company Uber is launching its autorickshaw service again starting with Bangalore and Pune in the country, reports PTI. Quoting Uber’s spokersperson, the PTI report reads that the cab aggregator will re-launch the service in New Delhi, Coimbatore, Indore and Bhubaneshwar following the launch in these two cities.
As per the report, UberAUTO will partner with only licensed existing auto-drivers who have been accredited by the authorities and every driver partner on UberAUTO will be required to submit valid government documents before they are given access to the Uber app.
The cab aggregator had launched in April 2015, starting from Delhi and later shutdown it by the end of the year. After the Delhi pause, Uber reintroduced the service in April 2016 from Coimbatore and in the Indore in May 2016. However, it shutdown that also by March, 2017. It announced shutdown for a few cities, and for some it stopped the service silently.
While the cab aggregator did not provided any detailed reasons to why they have shutdown the autorikshaw service in the cities. At the time of Delhi’s UberAUTO pause it had said that it was temporarily removing the product “to solve specific problems that need to be resolved to help it scale.” Also, at that time a WSJ report cited a Uber spokesperson saying that, “It was a temporary experiment which has now ended,” contradictingly stating that the company had plans to re-introduce the service, albeit without a timeline.
MediaNama has sent the following questions and will update once we hear from them.
-When does the service start, What would be the rates?
-How many auto drivers have partnered so far?
-Why had Uber shut it down the auto service last time?
Uber vs Ola
With this development, Ola and Uber lock horns directly. Ola launched its autorickshaw service in November 2014. Ola claims in a statement that it has around 1,20,000 auto rickshaws driver partners on its platform across 73 cities, and plans to launch in more locations in the coming months. The Ola app for Auto driver partners is available in English and 8 local languages namely Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, Malayalam, and Telugu.
MediaNama’s take
Note that both Uber and Ola chauffeur-driven hatchbacks offer cheap rides starting from Rs 8/KM depending on the city, and their carpool services are even cheaper. For instance, UberPool in Delhi is Rs 39 flat for rides under 8KM. Factors like cheaper-than-auto taxi may influence how Uber will go ahead about UberAUTO in the county.
