New player in Mumbai takes away 700 Ola, Uber drivers
A major setback awaits Ola and Uber in Mumbai. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis will launch a new cab aggregator next week, S3 Cabs, which claims it will focus more on drivers' benefits, unlike its competitors. 700 drivers, mostly from Ola and Uber, have reportedly joined S3 Cabs even before its launch. The parent company is expecting another 4,000 drivers in next couple of months.
Talking about the drivers' benefits, Sohel Kazani, director, Sahayadri Smart Safe, which owns S3 Cabs said, "Drivers will not be charged for first Rs. 1,800 collection every day and after that, they'll be charged only at 10%, which is just 50% of what Uber and Ola charge their drivers." Another major factor that helped Kazani was the support of 10 unions, including MNS-affiliated ones.
Though Uber and Ola didn't comment on this, but getting MNS-affiliated unions' support is indeed a big benefit because not too long ago, MNS transport wing spearheaded an Uber-Ola drivers' strike that lasted for full three days, causing major inconvenience to commuters.
Kazani admits that this way, he might not be able to mint money and that it's just a CSR activity. So he has other plans in place. He'd deploy his cab-partners into the domain he has worked for decades: transportation and delivery. He said, on a daily basis, Mumbai gets over 1L deliveries, but the system isn't adequate yet. That's where he'll come in.
"Three months down the line, we'll have an app for small delivery trucks acting as couriers for e-tailers and focus will only be on cash-on-delivery mode as this has highest margin in the segment because service fee is charged on value of cargo," he added.
