Uber's MAU had gone down a few months back in August. Explore the reasons why that might have happened, and what would you do? What can be done to receive warning signals of this beforehand?

Uber helps user to easily move from 1 destination to other by providing them a easy way to book cabs and travel to their destination.

The problem stated is that the Monthly Active Users at Uber have declined. I would first like to understand what is considered as Active in the case of Uber. Are we looking at users just visiting the platform to be Active or only those that request a ride are considered active.

Then, I would like to ask a few clarifying questions.

a. Has this decline been across the board or in some specific geography/state/city.

b. Has this been for some specific platform ( Android/iOS /Windows) or for some specific devices? Has this been at some specific times of the day or week.

c. Has this been for users of some specific segment - such as premium cars or autos or shared ride users only

c. How big has the fall been? Have we experienced something similar in the past or well or is this a one-off? Any past experiences may help with learnings from the same.

If everything comes across as status quo, I would like to start thinking across 4 different categories to further figure out where the problem may lie.

a. System-related issues

- Has there been any issue with the reporting tool we use to measure Activation? Has the event been misfiring?

- Did we recently change any business log for what we classify as a MAU. Has it been changed from a mere visit to a query.

b. External issues

- Has there been any new entrants in the market that have resulted in traffic getting diverted to them? Or have the existing competitors launched something new or changed their pricing?

- Has there been any market trends resulting in less traction, such as (Maybe, Remote work has reduced the need to travel and book rides)

- Has there been any issue with the traffic sources resulting in users coming to Uber.  Has the user traction reduced from different top sources ( such as Google ) or has the Internet been working fine

- Has there been any difference in the demographics of the users in terms of Age, Income. etc?

c. Internal Issues

- Did we do any change recently that may have resulted in a drop

- Have we seen an increase in bugs and user complaints of late. And if yes, what has been the main issues

- Check for things such as -

Has there been an increase in the ANRs of late?

What has been the Average Time to Load for the App for late? How has it fared recently?

- How has the demand side been of late? Has there been a decline in the availability of the riders available for the ride?

- Check for things such as-

 - Avg number of riders available online for every 5 km radius

- Avg time taken to recommend first ride options

- % of users accepting a ride after posting request

- % of users finishing off their ride.

- Have we made any changes around the pricing algo for the rides? Or have we changed something around the discounts/ cashbacks being provided to the users? Have we disabled any existing offers.

d - External Issues

 - Has the government come up with some changes ( Such as a lockdown because of the pandemic or an increase in the prices of the diesel resulting in increased car rental prices)

- Has there been any inclement weather such as heavy rains or cold weathers resulting in users reluctant to come out and travel.

After a little probing, it has come across that there has been an existing competitor that has been getting good PR on the back of its promise of safe travel in these covid times by the name of Bluecart.  Users need not touch the doors of the car to open and close and there are precautions to ensure the driver does not come in contact of the user. They have seen a substantial increase in acquisitions and transactions of late which is something that may have impacted us.

In order to solve for this, we would need to solve for the concerns that the users may be having in the current times with respect to safe travel both via incremental changes on the booking and the travel experience. Some options could be -

-- For the booking experience  ( Driver's vaccinations status, Last scheduled temperature reading)

-- For the travel experience ( Mandatory Mask for the drivers, Cordoning off the Driver's area, No shared rides)