If you were the Senior PM at Uber, how would you define the metrics and north star of your team before leaving for a 2-month break?

I would like to clarify the following:

Is there any specific company objective that needs to be achieved? à No

Are we talking about Uber’s global operations or any region-specific operation? à You can take a call

I will answer the question from the point of view of Uber India. In India, Uber offers only the ride-hailing service (no Uber Eats), along with package delivery.

I will structure the answer by initially looking at the overall goal of Uber India, then discuss the user actions and the corresponding metrics. I will ultimately pinpoint the north star metric to be considered.

Now, mission of Uber is to provide transportation as reliable as running water, everywhere, for everyone. Uber operates as a two-sided marketplace, connecting the drivers (not owned by Uber) with the riders through a variety of services such as trips, rentals, intercity, group rides etc. Uber generates revenue through commissions on every ride and through advertisements. Uber started operating in India in 2013 and is still not profitable. Uber has been facing stiff competition from Ola, Rapido, Blu Smart, DriveU, Namma Yatri etc. Without any differentiated offering/service, for Uber India to be profitable, Uber needs to increase its market share.

So, the overall goal of Uber is to increase market share of rides. To increase market share, Uber needs to acquire more users or nudge users to book more rides or nudge users to book more high value rides.

Now let’s look at the user/rider actions (for booking regular trip rides):

• User signs up into Uber from Play Store, referral link or from any advertisement
• User logs into Uber
• User books a ride
• User waits for a match
• User receives a match or needs to rebook
• User waits for the driver to pick him/her up or cancels the ride request
• User reaches his/her destination
• User makes the payment
• User closes the app

Now let’s look at the user/driver actions (for booking regular trip rides):

• Driver signs up into Uber
• Driver logs into Uber
• Driver gets the available incoming ride request
• Driver accepts/rejects the incoming ride request
• Upon accepting, driver travels to the pickup point or cancels the ride request
• Driver starts the ride
• Driver ends the ride

Now, lets discuss the metrics from riders, drivers and rides perspectives:

1. No. of new riders signing up monthly - split by channels of acquisition
2. No. of new drivers signing up monthly – should be tracked but drivers will be onboarded based on business health and P&L statements (as not having enough rides and still onboarding drivers does not make sense)
3. No. of riders booking rides (D/W/M)
4. No. of drivers accepting rides (D/W/M)
5. Frequency of ride requests/rider - split by low, med and high value rides
6. No. of rides completed (D/W/M) – split by low, med and high value rides
7. No. of ride requests failed due to unavailability of drivers (D/W/M)
8. No. of ride requests cancelled (D/W/M) – split by riders and driver
9. Average wait time for the riders to find a match
10. Average wait time for the drivers to show up at the pickup point after a match
11. NPS scores or the rider/driver satisfaction

Keeping in mind the overall goal of increasing the market share and the 3 ways of achieving it, the no. of rides completed (D/W/M) – split by low, med, and high value rides can be treated as the north star metric. 

The metric value of new users acquired who start making ride requests will get reflected in the number of rides completed. Similarly, the metric value of users booking more rides or booking more high value rides will also get reflected in the north star metric.

But, the entire team should keep an eye on all the 4 guardrail metrics 7, 8, 9 and 10 mentioned above. An increase in any of these metrics is a sign of trouble which should be thoroughly investigated and analyzed. At the same time, team should look out for the bug reports.

Please note I have not considered ride type such as Moto, XL, etc as it varies from one city to another in India.