With People Working From Home, Ride-Hailing Apps Experience Severe Drop In Daily Customers

With COVID-19 taking a tiger grip in India, offices across the country are asking employees to avoid stepping out and instead work from home. While this might be good news to many employees, it isn¡¯t as good for Ola and Uber drivers.

Reuters

Driver associations have told ET that In Bengaluru, Uber and Ola rides are down as a third since last week as companies are advising their staff to restrict business travels and work from home instead.

Companies like Bounce, Mobikwik, Unacademy, Meesho, Swiggy have already asked their employees to work from home.

According to Tanveer Pasha, president of OTU Drivers and Owners Association, ¡°Business has dried up completely. There has been a 40-50% drop since the last one week as all companies have given their employees permission to work from home.

He further added, ¡°We have approached the state (Karnataka) government asking them to get banks to waive off our EMIs for two months at least.¡±

Pasha also revealed that around 5 percent drivers have left the city to their native places, due to fear of contracting the novel coronavirus. He says, ¡°The rest of us are on the roads and taking whatever little business we are getting.¡±

Reuters

People aware of the situation have shared with ET that most of the money cab drivers make is through people daily officegoers/ commuters. With them staying indoors, the cab drivers only have travellers going to the airport or railway station/ bus stands etc.

A corporate transport solutions provider MoveinSync which is known to have over 1 lakh cab trips per day across the country has revealed to ET that it has witnessed a 10 percent drop in business across India.

Deepesh Agarwal, cofounder and CEO of MoveInSync states, "The increase in the number of Covid-19 affected patients has definitely caused panic among officegoers." Surprisingly, the business of self-driving cars (from brands like Zoomcar, Revv, Bounce etc.) isn¡¯t affected by this, as of now.