Time to up the game!🚀🚀🚀
The latest big feature announcement Uber Flex is a long-awaited change.
So what is Uber Flex?
A mechanism that is presented to the commuters with 9 distinguished price points to choose from and look up for drivers who are willing to take a shot at it.
Simply put — A flexible pricing service
This feature is currently being tested in India Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities and rolled out for cab services in the first place and later expanded to 3-wheelers as well.
Old Ride Cost = Driver’s Share + Platform Commission + Taxes
New Ride Cost ~ Function( Driver’s willingness to accept a ride price, Commuters Tagged Price, Platform Commission, Taxes, Travel Distance, Time of Travel )
Given the change in the cost function, let’s understand the impact on user experience!
1. Differentiation: Will this deemed feature has any impact on the long-standing problem of Uber drivers canceling problem?
Instead, this is even providing a reason to the driver to legitimate their call to cancel a ride.
2. Wait Time: A user has to select the price accordingly and wait for a driver to accept the ride, which was not the case earlier as the algorithm used to assign them
3. Flexibility vs Urgency: The war for quick service against flexibility will not be over anytime soon
4. Competition: We all know users tend to operate between Ola Uber Rapido inDrive to look for the best offerings and then make a call.
This feature will present an opportunity for the commuters to make an informed decision.
5. Infra Cost: Given the non-linear functionality and option of polling for users, the Kafka layer becomes more delicate with upheaval requests
What more can be done here?
Uber and commute companies can try to figure out this use case.
Price computing on the go.
Imagine Uber identifies high-density areas, and periods of the incoming requests and can evaluate the price on the go (Demand ~ Supply function)
This is very useful, especially for three-wheeler rides as the competition is not with other commute orgs but local rides.
The only key differentiator is the price!
Please find the scenario evaluation in the insert picture.
Feel free to share your thoughts.
Reference: https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/05/uber-flex-india/
P.S: For friends in Hyderabad do check Yaary!
#Commute #ProductManagement #KPKR
