My favorite product is Uber. Uber is a ride sharing service that lets users get a cab or auto to travel from one point to another. It is my favorite for one huge reason that it picks me up from my home and drops me at the exact destination and doesnt charge me a lot for the ride.

One painpoint I have experienced while using Uber is that there are a lot of cancellations on Uber after the driver is matched with a rider due to several reasons : driver not wanting to travel to the destination, driver not willing to travel a longer distance to pick up a rider, driver wants to take a break etc. This is a major problem since a lot of time dealing with all this. Specially in cities such as Bangalore, I have seen this happening several times in a row. I often get late to reach work due to this.

Lets look at some solutions to solve this problem.

We are looking at specifically at the daily commuter persona.

1) Ride Assurance Program – Users can register for this ride assurance program by paying a subscription fee.

• Rider will provide details in advance – Location Pickup, Pickup Time, Destination. The rider has to opt in on a daily basis to request this assured ride.
• Riders who are a part of this program will be matched with top rated drivers as in case of Ola Select but in this case, the matching would happen in advance where drivers can see the pickup location, destination and pickup time in advance.
• Drivers will be paid x % extra for every ride they complete which is an assured ride,  at the same time, they will be fined heavily for cancellation.

2) Auto-Match couple of drivers – We can automatically match a couple of drivers with a rider with one driver on standby. He will have to start towards pickup if the driver shown on the app cancels.

I will go with solution 1 since the second solution may impact the overall utilization of the driver and affect the earnings per driver per day – also impacting supply which is critical in urban areas.

I would look to measure NPS, number of cancellations for assured rides, wait time for non-assured rides, number of subscriptions of ride assurance program per month and growth, number of completed assured rides per month and growth.