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{Uber} union {Ola}. Who is the smartest of all?

During a recent visit to Bangalore in Karnataka, India which I was visiting for a day after several years I took the app based taxi ride. In India the major players are Uber and Ola. While they have their share of customer dissatisfaction (cancelled rides, driver misbehavior, high peak charges and tonnes of other thing), what struck me was to ask a question as to 

who are  the smartest  people who are part of this app based taxi infrastructure

 As you would have guessed, it was prompted by an incident.

While I have made no attempts to look up the people structure of either  of these two app based taxi companies, the hand sketch grossly captures the structure, 

  • the cone makes up for all the people (managers, market researcher, developers - both software and algorithm, ...) who work for these companies, CEO included! and 
  • the square that is primarily the people who drive these taxi
It is fair to assume that the cone is made up of specialized people (Enginers, MBA, Researchers, etc) who come from specialized institutions (IIT, IIM, ...) and the square is made up of people, majority of whom might not have come from specialized institutions.
 
Gross simplification of the people who work (directly or indirectly) for Uber and Ola

What is important is to note that these two companies, offering the same service rarely share anything, they have separate infrastructure, they use their own AI based algorithms to match the rider to the ride and the driver to the customer and compute the fare etc. As expected these are two different companies! Except ofcourse the drivers who drive for both these companies {in terms of using the app!}

However, if not all the drivers, a significant set of drives with the switch of an application can become an Ola driver or a Uber driver (represented by the intersection of the squares!).

The incident

I book an Ola to go to the airport, instead of asking for the OTP, the driver asks me 

"How much are you being charged?"

I say," INR 1335" hesitantly. 

"Sir can you cancel the ride?", He asks. 

I ask him "Why?"

He says, "Ola will give me approximately INR 600 for this ride, if you cancel it, they will charge you INR 35 as the cancellation charges, I can take you to the airport for INR 1300 (all in my pocket). You do not loose anything, a poor fellow like me gains a lot"

I am stunned. 

I say "Isn't it unfair? You got this opportunity of this ride because of Ola platform and now you are being dishonest."

He gives me a "You are a Gandhi" look. 

I reluctantly agree only out of fear that he might cancel the ride and I will be left with no taxi to reach the airport in time. 

After a few minutes into the ride, he switches of his Ola App. I figured out that he did not want Ola to know that he was taking me to the airport. 

Now comes the smarter part.

And after almost 1 hour we are closing in on to the Bangalore airport, this is when he displays his mastery, he switches on the Uber app and lo he becomes a Uber driver, ready to take someone else from Bangalore airport to their home.

The smartest (in what ever sense) in the whole chain are the drivers that ride both Ola and the Uber. They make use of the infrastructure of both Ola and Uber smartly (can not say it is fair) to take maximum earnings. 

Unless the Uber and Ola infrastructure talk to each other, there is no way either of them will find these smart drivers using their platforms without paying for it.

Advantage square. Specialized people in cone need to catchup!

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Comments

Unknown said…
Interesting read, faced a similar situation in West Bengal recently.
2:52 PM
Sudha Bodhi said…
It's true. Had the same experience too. Now a days i refuse to say the amount if the taxi driver asks stating that ride booked by my relative and don't know about the details.😊.Most of them will become silent. Rarely some of them demands more fixed amount to be added with final rate after the ride.
12:03 PM
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