Uber Pool Ride Sharing Service Launched In Delhi
In January 2021, Uber ATG/Advanced Technologies Group, a joint venture minority-owned by SoftBank Vision Fund, Toyota, and Denso that was developing self-driving cars, was sold to Aurora Innovation for $4 billion in equity and Uber invested $400 million into Aurora.[82][83].[84] In early 2015, the company hired approximately 50 people from the robotics department of Carnegie Mellon University.[85] On September 14, 2016, it launched self-driving cars in Pittsburgh using a fleet of Ford Fusion cars[86][87] and on December 14, 2016, it began testing self-driving Volvo XC90 SUVs in San Francisco.[88] After the California Department of Motor Vehicles forced the program to cease operations a week later,[89] the program was moved to Arizona.[90] In March 2018, it paused testing after the death of Elaine Herzberg in Tempe, Arizona.[91] Uber restarted testing in December 2018 after receiving local approval in Pittsburgh[92][93] and Toronto.[94]In October 2021, Uber acquired Drizly, an alcohol delivery service, for $1.1 billion in cash and stock.[95] On January 20, 2022, Uber acquired Australian car-sharing company Car Next Door.[96]
Uber Pool ride sharing service launched in Delhi
After Bangalore, Uber has launched UberPool, its ride-sharing service in Delhi. This lets users share their ride and the cost with another person who is requesting a ride along a similar route. You will get vehicles that are available on uberX and uberGO, but the trips are 10 to 30% cheaper than uberGO, making it the cheapest Uber.
One of the fastest-growing features for both Uber and Lyft is matching multiple riders headed in the same direction in one shared car. This week Lyft doubles down on carpooling by launching its Lyft Line service in six new markets: Seattle, Denver, Philadelphia, San Diego, Silicon Valley, and New Jersey.
Shared rides account for 25-30% of overall trips on Ola and Uber in key cities such as Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru, three people aware of the matter said. Both firms have either dropped fares or are running promotions for ride sharing to attract new customers. For instance, Uber has capped carpooling fares at Rs49 for the first 8km in Delhi, Bengaluru and Chennai.
Ola is offering Share Pass, a subscription-based service launched in November last year that offers carpooling at a flat fare, at a steep discount. Ola is also offering a share pass for five trips at Re1. Usually, the firm offers a five-ride pass for Rs149, while the ones for 20 and 40 rides costs Rs249 and Rs349 per month, respectively, for the first 8km.
Uber claims ride sharing has witnessed maximum uptake in Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Hyderabad. The growing adoption of uberPOOL is very encouraging. The fact that millions are willing to share rides gives us the confidence that we are collectively driving a positive change to reduce carbon footprint," Shweta Rajpal Kohli, head of policy at Uber India, said in a statement.
Like its ride-sharing taxi service, the move is likely to pose a challenge for local administrations that currently regulate both private and state-owned bus services that offer rides within cities.
Days after acquiring SabKuchFresh, Jugnoo has launched the ride sharing option on its app for users across the country, and not just Chandigarh. Samar Singla has also said that the pool service will cost 20% lesser than normal rides, even in case a rider match is not found.
However, Jugnoo is confident that commuters will not face any issues and can enjoy cheaper rides from now on. On the other hand, the auto-rickshaw drivers will enjoy incentive of almost 1.5 times the ride cost in case the riders opt for pooling service. We do not know the details of this, but it looks like some serious investor money being burnt.
UberPOOL does not need any introduction. It is one of the most efficient ride sharing services in India, from a Silicon Valley-based company that aims to reduce the ride costs and club people travelling on the same route.
According to Uber, nearly 25% of the bookings came for uberPOOL, which gives enough incentive for Uber to pass on the service to other similar cities. Of course, not just passengers, but drivers also benefit from the pooling service by spending less time finding the next rider.
American Online Cab aggregator Uber has now introduced its ridesharing services dubbed the uberPOOL in Delhi. It's worth noting that the ride sharing service was first launched in Bengaluru a few months back.
The uberPOOL service allows riders to share their ride on Uber with another person who is also requesting a ride along the same route. This new feature in turn is expected to reduce the surge pricing which has been plaguing the online cab services in the National Capital region for some time now. Using the uberPOOL services riders can save about 10-30% of their ride charges (as compared with uberGO).
In order to use uberPOOL service all you need to do is to slide over to the uberGO option in your app. Then set up pickup location and drop off location and request a cab as usual. However on placing a booking request you will encounter two options - 'Share your car' and 'Get your own car' option. As you may have already understood by now the 'Share your car' option is for the ride sharing service. The Uber app will also show a guaranteed fare thereby enabling you with the option to know the exact fare even before your proceed with your journey.
Thereafter place the Request button which will then match you with another rider who is also traversing on the same route. Currently uberPOOL services are available only between 7AM-9PM, 7 days a week using Cash, PayTM, Airtel Money, Credit or even Debit Card.
The uberPOOL services are however restricted to select places in Delhi and each request can have upto maximum 2 riders per pick up. For details regarding the available locations for uberPOOL services in Delhi you can always check on the company's official blog here.
Early on in the pandemic, Uber teams that worked on shared rides strategy pitched Khosrowshahi new ideas including operating a shuttle service or running a traditional casual carpool service. The CEO was supportive, but the ideas were tabled as the company focused on other areas of the business affected by the health crisis, said a person familiar with the matter.
Feb: Uber enters Romanian market when it launched its uberXapp in Bucharest.May: Uber experiments with pilot cash payments in Hyderabad, IndiaJun: Uber exits Romania after President Klaus Iohannis makes it illegal to transport people for a fee without valid taxi authorization.Dec: Lyft (USA), Didi Kuaiki (China), Ola Cabs (India) and GrabTaxi (South-East Asia) announce global technology and service alliance. All of these are backed by Softbank (Japan), a company that will later (in 2017) buy $1.4 billion in Uber stocks.Dec: Uber completes 1 billion trips
Amid the Delhi government's effort to curb pollution by introducing the odd-even scheme, ride-hailing company Uber started its bike-sharing service, Uber BikeShare in the capital city which will allow users ride with another bike rider going in the same direction.
sRide is another growing carpooling app in India which that claims safety for its riders. This carpooling service has bagged over 1 Million users and is considered to be the top carpool app in India. This apart, it also offers the best bike pooling services at affordable prices. It is currently available in more than 10 cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Pune, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Coimbatore, Bhubaneswar, and others.
After a successful launch in Delhi and Bangalore, UberPOOL has extended its services to other cities including Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, and Bhubaneswar. Launched in the year 2009, this American company is the largest ride-hailing and car-pooling company today. Recently, the company has renamed UberPOOL to Uber ShareX in the US.
I believe the competition is helping us in a lot of ways. Carpool as a concept is still very much new in India, and the marketing efforts are helping in educating the users about the alternate mode of transportation that is affordable & more social. Even though we have a sizable chunk of users sharing city to city rides, but our focus is more on within the city travel. Once we create a large enough user network for intra-city travel, the inter-city segment would be elementary for us to tap into.
Online travel group Ibibo has launched a carpooling app named Ryde that lets users share their rides and travel cost. Ryde operates in a similar space as BlaBlaCar and Tripda, but stands out, as it offers the service for both intra and intercity rides.
A similar app is CarEgiri, which was developed in 2014 by a team of city-based IT professionals and is currently accessed by around 2,500 people, enabling users to exchange kilometers for rides. Someone offering carpool service earns in km, and the one availing of the trip spends them. Siddharth Jagtiani, founder and chief technical officer of the app, had this to say,
Toronto startup BlancRide is making big waves with its carpooling app targeted at commuters. Its algorithm connects drivers with passengers who live in nearby neighbourhoods and work close to each other. Drivers can recoup some costs of operating their vehicles through in-app payments from passengers. This leads to shorter ride times as it allows commuters to use High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes. More commuters sharing vehicles also reduces their environmental footprint. BlancRide will also use its innovative platform to facilitate rides between employees at large companies who live near each other.
Hamilton-based startup ecoRIDES has noticed a gap in the black-car market: a lack of environmentally friendly vehicles. The startup is bringing sustainable transportation options to executive customers with its app-based Tesla ride-sharing service. We spoke with Jason Guanzon, Founder of ecoRIDES, to learn more. Read the interview here.