At the end of any event (Sports event, Concerts, New Year Event etc.), there is a rush of people leaving the venue all at once and there is a mismatch in demand & supply for Uber. Surge pricing is not so effective in managing it and it also gets us bad press. You are a PM at Uber and have been asked to solve this problem. What product interventions can you introduce here?

This is a problem solving question:

Step 1: Understand the problem:

Is this an people specific or internal issue?

1) Why do people order cars at once? Dont they plan for their exit time since they know when the event will end

2) Its not profitable to drive the short distance from venue to the train station or metro station and drivers refuse to ply

3) Drivers dont feel safe enough to drive near the venue given the crowd?

4)  Its a demand problem. Too many people, too less cars

Is this an external issue

1) The event ends late into the evening or night when drivers are not available

2) The event location doesnt allow drivers to wait for more than 5 mins to pick up a passenger

3) There has been vandalism and rowdy crowds coming out of the venue

4) The event ending coincides with office closure hours hence leading to compounded demand

Step 2: Create a hypothesis

There are two major problems causing increase in demand

1) Ride hailers dont plan in advance that they need a car

2) Time is lost in locating the passenger/driver thereby making it timeconsuming and unprofitable to ply cars for venue patrons

Step 3: Suggest action items:

1) If a onward trip is made for a venue knowing that there is a specific event taking place, the system offers to pre-book return journey in advance offering a small discount --> This will allow for plan for additional cars for the return journey

2) Rather than surge charging , charge users for the time for which the car is idled when it arrives at the venue to pick up the passenger. This will encourage users to find the cars early to avoid a heavy idling fee. There could be a tradeoff when the driver intentionally might try to hide himself behind other cars so to make more money idling the car though this a metric that can measured for the driver on a on-going basis