UBER’s mobile app technology brings about cashless taxi rides in Sri Lanka
World renowned taxi app giant, UBER has entered the Sri Lankan market to revolutionise taxi rides with a cashless payment method technology. The days of calling a cab and waiting for hours for it to arrive or stopping a tuk-tuk along the roadside without realising whether there are people in it or not and then spending more time finding another one, are no more with technology advanced so much and so forth where everything is available at the touch of a button. Also disputes between customer and driver to change cash will fade away with new technologies existing, where cash is not involved at all.
Test Legend Mahela Jayawardena after taking a UBER ride.
A few months back when ‘PickMe’, a local mobile app to fetch a tuk or taxi for a ride was launched in Sri Lanka, most people called it the ‘Sri Lankan UBER’, believed to have copied the same concept as UBER. At the time, the Business Times contacted both PickMe and UBER, which at that time was not introduced to Sri Lanka, to find out the technology behind both apps and realised that they were not the same as believed by most people, but have different strategies and concepts.
Karun Arya, Head of Communications for UBER in South Asia and India who firmly stated that the company had no plans to enter Sri Lanka in the beginning of July this year, spoke to the Business Times after the app was unofficially launched in Sri Lanka two weeks back. He said, “We have started our operations in Sri Lanka by deploying two cars within Colombo for the moment to see the potential of customers using the app. For now it takes 10 to 20 minutes for a UBER taxi driver to arrive to pick up the customer to the destination. “The official launch of the app will be held soon in a few weeks,” he added.
Mr. Arya explained how the app operates: “After freely downloading the UBER app in the mobile or computer, a customer has to register with a valid credit or debit card and then request for a taxi at the touch of a button. The nearest driver is alerted and once he/she accepts the booking request, the customer’s name, contact number and pick-up location are provided through the UBER app. Similarly, the customer receives a booking confirmation along with the driver and vehicle details and can also track the taxi arriving real time via GPS at the exact pick-up location. The trip fare is calculated using GPS data via satellite which is then forwarded to UBER’s servers for accurate billing and immediate receipt generation. At the end of the trip the customer gets down and walks away from the car. The trip fare is billed automatically to the customer’s credit card and a receipt with journey details is emailed immediately after. This way a cashless transaction for the entire journey is made and no cash was involved.”
The initial or minimum charge for a journey starts from Rs. 100 and Rs. 50 will be charged for additional km travelled. Further Rs. 2 will be charged per minute of the total journey, noted Mr. Arya. He also mentioned, “UBER requires that our driver-partners have a valid driver’s licence, registration for their vehicle, commercial insurance covering the driver and up to 4 passengers, a national identity card and a valid revenue certificate.” Anyone who has a car with the above requirements can join the UBER platform while working for another taxi company as well, he added.
UBER was launched in San Francisco in 2010 and is now available in over 343 cities in 63 countries. After launching the first Asian city Singapore in 2013, Colombo Sri Lanka is the 70th city in Asia. With over one million credit cards and 11 million debit cards users in Sri Lanka and over 20 per cent of the population on smartphones Sri Lanka is poised for UBER, stressed Mr. Karun.
UBER has also faced its share of criticism in other cities particularly errant drivers and non-Uber drivers protesting against the UBER intrusion saying it is taking away their business. On Tuesday, an Indian court sentenced an Uber taxi driver to life imprisonment after finding him guilty of raping a female passenger last year in Delhi. The 26-year-old woman was taken to a secluded area and raped after booking a journey home with Uber in December.
Delhi later banned Uber and several other web-based taxi firms for many months, accusing them of failing to carry out adequate driver checks.