There are no free lunches.
Cab situation in the 90’s: Only yellow black taxi’s available:
Advantages:
1. Cheap
Disadvantages:
1. Poor service
2. Bad state of cabs
3. Unsafe
Cab situation in the 2000’s: Entry of meru & other radio cabs as an alternate choice:
Advantages:
1. Better service
2. Safety measures enforced
3. Better quality cabs
Disadvantages:
1. More expensive
Radio cab services like meru are more expensive due to the extra input costs going into better cabs, training of drivers, infrastructure like parking space, setting up helplines etc.
Current Situation: Entry of extremely well funded ‘taxi aggregators’ like OLA & UBER
Advantages:
1. Better service
2. Huge discounts
3. Easy to book
4. Better quality cabs
5. Better safety than yellow & black cabs but less than radio cabs like meru
Disadvantages:
None visible. Really??
Future Situation:
1. Radio cabs like discounted out of the market with market monopoly for Uber/Ola
2. Discounts withdrawn with price controlled by Uber/Ola
Advantages:
1. Convenience
Disadvantages:
1. Expensive fares
2. No competition
3. Safety?
Unless taxi aggregators are required to invest in infrastructure like parking, training of drivers, safety standards, help lines, in the long run, they will end worse for the common man.
Most of the 1 billion dollars invested in companies like UBER/OLA is not being used to improve services to customers but to ‘acquire customers’ through discounts, branding, marketing & quick expansion.
As some of you ‘acquired customers’ would notice, discounts on sites like Myntra, Flipkart etc starting to disappear. It’s not long before they do so at Uber/Ola. Will choices like Meru exist then?. There are no free lunches!
Vikrant Shanbhag
As this debate has been on focus due to the recent incident in Delhi, my argument is even if Uber had a duly updated model in place to track such mishaps would it have avoided the incident? Taking this further the if Air BNB for argument sake has a model where they do a thorough character check on the service providers and has a highly advanced tracking system; will it again avoid such incidents? Facebook can’t be blamed if someone befriends someone and then rapes her later. Rape used to happen before this tech boom. I believe it’s not a business model or responsibility of any business for such incidents; its how people use it. A gun can be used to protect you or to mug you.
Please don’t send me hate messages for this. Don’t misunderstand that I support rape, it’s just that I think there are no such business models/modules/idea that can avoid rape from happening. It’s a bi-product of our society and not of any business.
Sincere apology if I have hurt any one with my views.
Ishani
Vikrant,
You have a valid point. It was due to Uber only that police could get the records of the driver and tracked him own so quickly. In 2004 a foreign tourist was raped & killed in prepaid taxi in Delhi, why prepaid was not banned? or for that matter, after Nirbhaya instance, all buses should have been banned? Banning is not a solution, it will make life of women even worse as they will be stranded without cabs!
Govt should make the framework so strict that such anti social elements cannot get licenses etc so easily. Similarly Uber also needs to make its processes stronger to filter out the drivers.