Uber on Thursday said it is now showing trip destination to drivers before they decide to accept a ride to enable them to make informed choices as the ride-hailing app announced a host of new measures promising to improve platform experience for drivers as well as riders. Upfront destination feature is already live across 20 cities and will be expanded to all others, Uber said in a statement. The move assumes significance as the government recently warned cab aggregators, including Ola and Uber, of strict action unless they improve their systems and redress mounting consumer complaints.
Uber would look to expand the service to six Indian cities
Uber is locked in an intense battle with market leader Ola, which counts Didi as an investor.
There is a new energy in 2015 and a new breed of young, ambitious innovators and entrepreneurs who are coming up with creative solutions to many of India's problems, says Mallika Kapur.
The government on Monday asked online food business operators like Swiggy and Zomato to submit a proposal within 15 days on improving their consumer grievance redressal mechanism amid rising complaints from customers. The department of consumer affairs directed e-commerce FBOs "to transparently show consumers the breakup of all charges included in the order amount such as delivery charges, packaging charges, taxes, surge pricing etc." According to an official statement, "The Department of Consumer Affairs has directed major e-commerce Food Business Operators (FBOs) to furnish the current framework as well as a proposal on improving the consumer grievance redressal mechanism within 15 days."
Ford, which had announced to quit the Indian market last year, said it was exploring the possibility of using one of its plants in India to produce electric cars for exports.
The Code on Social Security, 2020 gives a lot of comfort to gig firms which recognise cab drivers or food delivery executives as 'independent contractors' who directly do business with customers with the help of their digitised platforms.
A team of more than 60 people under Neeraj Mittal, an IAS officer, was instrumental in getting up the New Industrial Policy 2021 targeting investments of around Rs 10 trillion by 2025.
From $10 billion deployed in Indian start-ups in 2017, $6 billion went to unicorns
Gig workers are usually spoken of in the context of the sharing economy, like Uber, Ola drivers, delivery persons for Zomato and Swiggy and so on. This is the first time such workers will be covered under India's social security law.
Sumit Nagal was beaten by world number 46 Albert Ramos-Vinolas 6-4, 2-6, 5-7.
Ex-AAP strategist Shefali Misra to join Uber as head of public policy
Most of the unicorns or billion-dollar valuation firms including Flipkart, Paytm and Ola have had the maximum stakes owned by foreign funds. The founders of all these firms have either single digit stakes in their companies or in low double digits.
Vogo, which has a fleet of over 12,000 vehicles mainly across Hyderabad, Mysuru and Bengaluru, is also betting big on India's growing traffic congestion.
SBI Cards on Tuesday launched a credit card especially meant for transactions on e-commerce websites.
Hyundai, which is also toeing Maruti's lines, said special schemes are offered to engage the cab aggregators, including annual-maintenance-contract packages and extended warranty.
Mahindra launches e-mobility platform 'Glyd' to take on Ola, Uber. Targeted at office-going executives, it offers web-conferencing, curated entertainment and music content from selective partners.
With a new $100-billion technology fund, SoftBank is likely to go after market leaders.
Vijay Mallya, who faces prosecution in India, is reportedly in London.
The mines ministry has put a conditional offer to offload 10 per cent stake in Nalco, saying that the money accrued from such a sale would be invested in the PSU.
Uber and Ola both welcomed the move as a step in the right direction.
Rediff readers share their experience about taxis and autorickshaws in India.
The Indian arm is the second largest unit for the company, crosses 500 mn trips milestone
Swiggy is rapidly scaling up its technology (tech) teams as the food delivery giant is witnessing strong recovery and growth over the past few months. The SoftBank-backed company is hiring across engineering, product, design, analytics, and data science functions in the next two quarters. Building this team, Swiggy is setting up a new development centre in Gurugram. Its rival Zomato, which had a stellar debut on the Indian stock exchanges in July, is also headquartered in Gurugram.
100,000 cabs and 45,000 autorickshaws would be plying on the Delhi-NCR routes to handle the rush.
Investments are at risk if operators are unable to resolve concerns of authorities and customers after the rape accusation.
'All these incidents go to show that the day of the anodyne, apolitical corporation is running out fast,' says Kanika Datta.
India Inc is facing threat from non-traditional sources.
Unacademy may see a funding dry spell for at least next 12-18 months and even last till 24 months and will cut costs to weather the lean period, said the chief executive of the education technology unicorn that recently laid off more than 600 employees. "This is a test for all of us. We must learn to work under constraints and focus on profitability at all costs. We must survive the winter," said Unacademy's co-founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal in a letter to the employees. "Winter is here. We are looking at a time when the funding will dry up for at least 12-18 months.
India's first true e-commerce marketplace is struggling for its survival and in it lies valuable lessons for pure play aggregators, say experts.
Leaders need to be ready to adapt to technological changes as quickly as possible, while they build the tech capabilities, Nadella said.
The ban on app-based taxi services will continue and vehicles violating it will be seized, the city government on Tuesday submitted in the Delhi High Court in New Delhi while Uber India Systems Pvt Ltd withdrew its plea against the December order stopping its operations.
The cloud kitchen market in India will hit $1.05 billion by 2023. Just 13% of the total market has been utilised so far.
A draft policy will be issued for public consultation in the coming weeks.
Drawn in by fuzzy promises about unleashing the entrepreneur in each of us and the benefits of being one's own boss, people find themselves instead oppressed by an algorithm, notes Rahul Jacob.
That's because India does not have a serious venture capital industry with an appetite for risk, observes T N Ninan.
The ride-hailing company will soon launch UberEATS, which has been testing food and grocery deliveries since 2014, in India. Alnoor Peermohamed reports.
The state governments of Karnataka and Maharashtra have also moved to exert more control on app-based taxi aggregators.
The company, which rents cars by the hour, day, week and month, has Mahindra E2O Plus and Tata E Tigor available on the platform for which it charges a subscription fee of Rs 15,000-20,000 per month.
Live commerce, quick commerce, group buying, WhatsApp commerce, dukaantech have made their mark.
