by Deepak Shenoy, Capital Mind I’ve been taking a lot of Ubers and Olas to work. More Uber than Ola [1], and I get phenomenal conversations because I can speak in Kannada, which is apparently a rare thing in Bangalore, looking at the number of drivers who seem to be delighted. The economics, from the driver’s angle, is fascinating. The first few things you realize is: The drivers are not “dumb”. Like I’ve found with auto drivers and politics (excellent awareness), the economics is plain obvious to the Uber drivers and they aren’t headless chickens. The vast majority of them are honest drivers who actually call each trip a “duty”. But each one is prone to a few points of “abusing the system”. We’ll get to that. There is complete acceptance that the current economic situation is extremely abnormal, and they are all scared of things changing . Most drivers are on multiple networks – Uber, Ola, TaxiForSure – and there is very little loyalty other than to the money. They don’t hesitate to tell you they’re being mercenary, and totally know that if I am paying X and they are getting 3X, Uber is paying the rest. But they won’t take any less. Let’s take a deeper look into the economics of the business. [1] I like Uber more because it’s cashless through PayTM or a Credit Card (launched recently). Ola’s cashless system of Ola Money is a waste of time because you can’t use it elsewhere. And drivers…
