<p><em>Trouble seems to tail Uber all over the world, but it drives on regardless. And never mind the potholes<br><strong>By Mala Bhargava</strong></em><br><br>Times were when you used to call your local taxi stand and keep your fingers crossed hoping the cab, rickety as it was, would turn up in time to take you to the airport. That tradition has been all but turned on its head by Uber Technologies, now a legitimate verb, icon of the on-demand economy and disrupter of transport in over 57 countries. It’s in a rich variety of trouble in most of those countries, but Uber is driving on regardless, never mind the potholes. With its new app-based model of ride-hailing, Uber is a fascinating study for anyone who wants to be part of the wave of startups today.<br><br>The $46-billion San Francisco-based Uber Technologies launched in 2009, and took the Indian roads starting with Bangalore in 2013. There have been radio taxi services in many parts of India for a while now, but Uber’s is a separate kettle of fish, one that has civic authorities and administrators nonplussed. It’s barged in with a fleet of cars, big and small, and a user just has to tap into an app to get a ride. “It’s liberating,” says an Uber customer, “I feel free to go anywhere, anytime and don’t really need a car of my own. Even if I use a cab everyday, it’s cheaper than the car, its EMIs, fuel, maintenance and a driver.”<br><br><strong>Legit Or Not?</strong><br>You may be able to get a ride in mere minutes, but amazingly, Uber doesn’t claim to be a taxi company. “We are a technology player,” says Neeraj Singhal, Uber’s head of expansion in India. “We don’t physically own cars, we don’t employ drivers, we aren’t a radio taxi company, we don’t have meters in Uber vehicles. There are many distinctions that make it important for us to be governed differently from others.”<br> </p><table align="center" border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" style="width: 500px;"><tbody><tr><td><img alt="" src="http://bw-image.s3.amazonaws.com/DEVAL-DELIVALA-and-NEERAJ-SINGHAL-lrg.jpg" style="width: 626px; height: 387px;"></td></tr></tbody></table><p><br>Uber believes it merely connects commuters with the means to get where they want with the use of technology. To get a taste of Uber, download the app and register. Pinpointing your location, the app will show you an offering of cars (even an auto rickshaw) for you to select. Set your destination, request a fare, and confirm the ride — sit back and wait for the driver’s call.<br><br>Uber was, for a start, tolerated by the transport authorities. But unfortunately for the company and commuters who were enjoying the convenience of cabs on demand, an Uber driver raped a passenger in Delhi in December 2014 — and the house of cards quickly collapsed. The question of who was responsible for the behaviour of drivers, who after all, Uber is supposed to train and check, exploded to the surface. It turned out the driver hadn’t even been verified and was a repeat offender who had even been in jail previously. The Delhi government promptly banned Uber in Delhi, and eventually in other cities, taking rival Ola Cabs and TaxiForSure with it. In fact, any app-based taxi service.<br><br>The legal issues have not been sorted out yet, but the companies have been permitted back on the roads, not that they had stopped being available for any length of time. Uber has, in fact, had many similar problems elsewhere in the world. In San Francisco, an UberX car ran over and killed a six-year-old girl and Uber disclaimed responsibility as there wasn’t a passenger in the car at the time. That’s not the way insurance company saw it. Uber’s UberPop service is banned in many countries and recently there were outright riots in France involving regular taxi drivers whom Uber is all but replacing. But brazening it out seems to be in the company’s culture. And it has paid off. “It is always good to be in a situation where you have innovated upon a historically archaic model, for lack of a better phrase,” says Singhal, “The model and the regulations, even in India, haven’t been improved upon in a long time. The Motor Vehicles Act was written in the 80s.”<br><br>Indeed, the technology used by Uber today was not in existence then and it could not be taken into account in the laws being used today. Clearly, the laws need to be upgraded to take in today’s reality. Uber says it is in close talks and is having “healthy discussions” with the government and it is time for regulatory changes that are good for everybody. The companies are now supposed to apply once again for licences to operate. So if one were to ask whether Uber and its rival Ola and other app-based car services are in fact legal — there’s no easy answer.<br><br><strong>How Safe Is Safe?</strong><br>Uber is not having an easy time shaking off the rape case of last year as it barely recedes into memory when some new incident erupts into the open. “Never before has there been such transparency,” explains Singhal. “Before, if you were to take a taxi somewhere, that’s that, it ends with no one knowing anything more. But now you have the ability to track a ride, use an SOS button, rate the driver, whose credentials we check, etc.” Transparency is bound to show up what may otherwise have remained unknown. Safety is possibly an issue that many e-commerce and on-demand services will have to address as deliverymen make their rounds of homes, a point sadly brought into focus by the assault on a little girl recently by a pizza delivery man. Deval Delivala, security lead at Uber, says that Uber is in multiple partnerships and projects to do everything possible to ensure the safety of commuters in Uber cars.<br><br>Like, Uber has a tie-up with First Advantage, a screening agency that authenticates drivers for the company. There is also a partnership with security app SafetyPin which crowdsources safety ratings across the city. But India, as a market, presents its own unique challenges. “In certain markets there are already existing extensive databases of information on citizens. To do background checks for drivers is then much easier,” she said.<br><br>“In the US, there are also lists like a sexual offenders list publically available. In India, it is said that 30 per cent of the drivers’ licences are fake. So new processes are needed to run multiple checks. These are not issues that are just pertinent to Uber and there is no one easy thing you can fix to ensure safety. It will have to be done through partnerships with many industries,” added Delivala.<br><br>Uber allows drivers, who have commercial licences issued by the government, to be accessible via its app, and so it can be argued that the responsibility for safe drivers is not Uber’s alone. Uber is taking no chances and exploring all avenues to safety. In Kolkata, it is trying out a solution with the police to set up screens in key control rooms that have an Uber dashboard of car movement. Any problem will trigger off an alert for the officers on duty to investigate. In New Delhi, none of that makes women comfortable riding in an Uber or other cab during the night.<br><br><strong>Ubering It Across India</strong><br>It is in Uber’s interest to tackle the safety issue and any others that arise because after the US, India is its secondlargest market geographically, and in terms of number of potential users. To open its largest facility outside the US, Uber has invested $50 million in Hyderabad and signed an MoU with the Telangana government. This facility will work on technology solutions and will identify and train 2,000 drivers — some of them women — by the end-2016 as it spreads beyond the 18 Indian cities it is already operating in. The company wants to cater to tier-II and tier-III towns in the shortest time possible.<br><br>In other markets, Uber allows personal cars to become part of the network, giving drivers the flexibility to work as many hours as they choose. An Uber driver could be a college student, who drives a few hours to earn a bit of money, or a full-time driver, whose only job is to operate a taxi service. In India, an Uber driver must have a commercial driving licence. The company does not object to a driver working across different platforms like Ola. Uber takes a percentage of the driver’s earnings but also comes up with incentive schemes that it keeps changing on a frequent basis. There are also attention-grabbing promotional offers for riders, including price cuts, offers to ride free in “supercars” and even order in a bunch of puppies to play with. Recently, it opened up direct credit card payment, if booking from an Android phone.<br><br>Uber has sunk its teeth into the Indian market, but globally as well as in India, its disruptive model means it is in for a bumpy ride. Although customers find it can often be cheaper than travelling in an autorickshaw, issues of safety create their own legal roadblocks every so often. “What Uber faced can be simply categorised as teething problems that any new entrant would face. Over time the Indian government and Uber will have to meet midway to work on legal and regulation issues. However, with recent announcements by Uber, it only goes to show that it’s here to stay,” says Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst & group CEO, Greyhound Research.<br> <br>With the company’s investments in India however, Uber has clearly dug its wheels in and decided there’s no turning back. <br><br>mala.bhargava@gmail.com, <br>@malabhargava<br><br>(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 10-08-2015)</p>
BW Reporters
Mala Bhargava has been writing on technology well before the advent of internet in Indians and before CDs made their way into computers. Mala writes on technology, social media, startups and fitness. A trained psychologist, she claims that her understanding of psychology helps her understand the human side of technology.