Should Uber reintroduce Uber Pool in India?

Clarifying questions

-          Am I the PM at Uber à Yes

-          I am assuming this reasoning/presentation would be for senior leadership à Right

Let me lay the land by discussing the customer and Uber as an organization

Uber: Since Uber is available in T1 Indian cities from almost a decade, I can say that Uber is now a veteran in its space. Recently, Uber’s CEO Mr. Dara was in India and he highlighted that Uber is not planning to diversify itself into any other services in Indian market as of now. Uber want to focus majorly on the car rides

So, as a company whose vision is to imagine the way world moves faster and better. The vision for India is to increase the market share and gain more users having more average lifetime value

The main focus of Uber is in the customer experience domain, which is evident from the ticket resolution

Accessibility of uber: T1 cities are covered with Uber, Majority of T2 cities are now in uber domain. However, for blue ocean prevails in T3 and T4 cities

Customer: In my experience the customer for Uber should be majorly working professionals (24 – 40) years of age. The another segment that might rarely use uber is school and college students.

We talked about the user segment and the company dynamics in Indian context. Let’s expand the horizon to the competitors in this space

Competitors: Ola is the biggest rival for Uber in the ride share business and now in T1 cities we can see emerging player is bluesmart (wholly electric fleet).

Both ola and uber discontinued the share options during covid-19 and did not restart

User segments affected by the Uber share

1.      Riders

2.      Drivers

3.      Uber as marketplace

In my perspective riders and drivers are most affected by this and there would be hesitancy in drivers to be onboarded with uber pool service since the average trip increase for them

Also there are other options in Uber itself, which are cost-effective such as auto rides and Uber moto. The biggest value add that Uber pool was providing was the cost-effectiveness that is now covered by other options

At the same time, with the introduction of Covid-19 variants, people nowdays are hesitant to share the closed spaces with strangers.

Conclusion: Considering the alternatives available for the uber pool in terms of cost-effectiveness and the uncertainties of Covid strains. At this moment, I would recommend not to re-introduce uber pool in India