This rewards programme will operate independently from Uber’s ride-based cash incentive programme, where drivers earn incentives based on the number of rides completed in a stipulated time period, and ratings received from riders.
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The company has been piloting this programme in Delhi-NCR, and is now rolling it out in more cities. This comes at a time when the cab aggregator industry has faced supply issues, with drivers moving out from platforms on account of decreasing earnings, in addition to the competition in the space intensifying.
Recently, Bengaluru-based ride-hailing platform Rapido started rolling out four-wheeler services, and California-headquartered service InDrive has also been expanding in India. In addition, Uber is also facing competition in some of its key markets from all-electric ride-hailing platforms such as BluSmart and Evera.
Speaking to ET, Shiva Shailendran, director-operations, Uber India & South Asia, said that through the pilot phase of the programme, the company saw improvements in stickiness and churn.
“Competition is good, it helps us innovate and come up with programmes like Uber Pro. We don’t see this as a threat but as an opportunity to innovate more,” he said. “We’ve seen through the pilot programme that stickiness of drivers on the platform improves after drivers benefit from this…they tend to churn less”.
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He also said that the company was currently seeing an all-time high driver supply in India. “A couple of years back we were in a recovery phase…there were a lot of supply issues, service quality concerns like driver cancellations, refusing to go to certain destinations,” said Shailendran. “Right now, the service quality is at the all-time best; cancellations are below pre-Covid levels, and the supply base is at an all-time high. We’re seeing more drivers engaging with the Uber platform than we’ve ever seen in India.”
He added that Uber plans to extend the programme to more cities and modes of travel such as autorickshaws and two-wheelers.
The details
The company is rolling out the programme across 12 markets, including Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, Lucknow, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad and Guwahati. It offers rewards and exclusive features to drivers who maintain a customer rating of 4.8 or above and have low trip cancellations.
A driver moves upwards in tiers by earning ‘points’ on every completed trip and meeting other criteria. The points are reset every three months, and the drivers’ tier status is determined on a rolling period of three months. As drivers move towards a higher tier, they get access to more rewards.
In addition to discounted car maintenance, motor insurance premiums and micro-loans, drivers also earn benefits such as ability to choose the area of preference for taking rides, and priority support.
The programme is already live in some of the other global markets Uber operates in.
