Uber has hiked fares by 10-15% across multiple cities to enhance driver earnings amid soaring fuel rates, one among a series of measures like flexibility on payment and destination visibility to make it easier for partners to continue to operate on the technology platform.
“With the recent hikes, we have managed to cushion the full impact of the fuel price increases,” Nitish Bhushan, Head of central operations, Uber India and South Asia, told ET, while adding that the slew of measures are focused on bringing back the “promise of reliability” under stress in recent times.
Bhushan qualified the measures as “iterative,” meaning they would be subject to revisions and enhancements after feedback from drivers and users. Uber’s renewed push for reliability arrives on the back of a surge in business among certain categories such as weekend travel and business commute witnessing strong post-Omicron wave adoption.
Uber India has been redoubling focus on its driver partners, prompted by suggestions by a council of drivers who now communicate grievances regularly to the India team of the San Francisco, California-based public company. Besides higher income for each ride, drivers can now choose trips based on the destination. This is incumbent on the driver crossing a certain trip acceptance threshold. “The upfront destination feature is already live across 20 cities and will be expanded to all others,” the company said in a post.
Additionally, drivers get paid more if they travelled farther to pick up a passenger, and get to choose the mode of payment, cash or online, for a ride. “Going a step further to make the cash or online decision irrelevant, we’ve now introduced a daily pay process for drivers. This will ensure that trip earnings from Monday to Thursday, are credited to drivers the next day, while earnings from Friday to Sunday, are credited on Monday,” read the blog post.
The conciliatory note follows an increase in customer grievances, particularly cancellations. Uber said in the post that its move to show ride destinations to drivers was part of an effort “to remove frustration for riders and drivers alike,” and an attempt to “incentivise right platform behaviour.”
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Uber has also said drivers would be monitored for repeated complaints on service quality, which could lead to penalties and restricted app access, said the post.
