PickMe invests Rs. 50 m to keep driver partners, customers safe

PickMe has maintained the highest health and safety standards to mitigate the adverse effects of the virus spread.  In the last one and a half years, the company has invested over Rs. 50 million in new innovations and safety measures to keep their driver partners and customers safe through the raging pandemic. The latest feature introduced by PickMe is especially for their passengers who can now identify the vaccinated status of the driver they hail via an indicator icon appearing on the app, the company said in a media release.

“With the start of the vaccination drive in the country, we encouraged all our driver partners to get the vaccine, by giving them a cash incentive. We will continue to provide our drivers this incentive until 80 percent of our fleet is vaccinated.  Currently we have more than 3,000 vaccinated driver partners and we are working towards reaching 60 percent before September 16,” says Gowshik Sathiyasiva, Head of Marketing & Communications of PickMe.

PickMe’s vaccination drive also extended to their passengers when they launched a special promotion, offering a discount of Rs.150 to passengers travelling to the nearest centre for their COVID-19 jab. The promotion was live for 3 weeks, and 5,000 customers used the discount to travel back and forth to get their vaccine. This promotion has now been re-initiated with the recent vaccination drive in the country.

Prior to the vaccination icon, a new tech feature was introduced last year, to show the driver’s temperature on the Passenger app and it was made mandatory for drivers to enter their temperature every time they logged in.  They implemented temperature checkpoints around Colombo and Kandy in partnership with the Sri Lanka Police, to make sure driver partners enter accurate data.