Some Musings from my Wanderings: Part-1
The last few months took me to various parts of the world, and gave me a chance to interact with a lot of cab and rickshaw drivers. From a homegrown collective of auto-rickshaws in Coimbatore to G7 Taxi in Paris, through the spectrum of Ola-Uber-FastTrack-RedTaxi-Careem, and the individual operators, my conversations yielded a lot of learning. They can be broadly classified into 3 categories: a) Driving solely on one/more ride hailing apps b) Do not drive for any ride hailing apps and only take offline bookings c) Drive for one/more ride hailing apps, and take offline bookings as well Category (a) turned out to be predominantly those who took up the profession after they saw that cab drivers made good money with zero business development efforts. They also turn out to be the ones who told me stories of unpaid EMI payments and abandoning cars in highways, as the dwindling payouts and changing rules for incentives on the ride hailing apps meant a very unsteady and diminished income. Ther